OBX

Sorry for the lapse the last couple of days. Obviously the photos tell some of the story. We crossed the North Carolina border a couple three days ago, came into Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks (OBX), journeyed to Ocracoke Island via both bike and ferry yesterday, and have our day off/rest day in Ocracoke today. The best news this morning is that we finally are catching a break on the weather. We lost the rain a couple of days ago but it was cold and windy coming into North Carolina - it almost seemed that the further south we got the colder it became. An extra layer under the jersey and a jacket was the order of the day. But this morning the sun is out, there is not a cloud in the sky and the breezes are the gentle kind that come off the water. Ocracoke is actually an island in the lower of the Outer Banks just south of Cape Hatteras. Because the highway from Kitty Hawk to Hatteras is still out due to Hurricane Irene we had a change of routes yesterday. Instead of the coastal route and a short ferry to Ocracoke we had to come inland for a considerable distance - 70 some miles to be more accurate - and take a ferry out of the tiny village of Swan Quarter, a ferry ride of 2.5 hours. The logistics are a long story but the bottom line is that we got up early, were "bumped" forward about 30 miles along a road in the middle of a huge swamp and rode 40 miles to the ferry. When we pulled over to offload the bikes from the support van and begin riding the swarm of mosquitoes was almost overwhelming. I do believe they might have carried both me and the bike away if I had not been waving my arms like a lunatic. The only way to avoid them was to get on the bike and get moving which we did and quickly. In any case the roads were good, the sun was out even if it was cold and windy and the scenery turned out to be interesting. Miles of swampland with dark sloughs along the side that probably held alligators but it was much too cool for them to be out and about. Every few miles there would be stretches of farms, mostly cotton but also soybeans and a bit of corn. The occasional town or village had all the pretty little churches that small towns down in this part of the world always seem to have. The previous day was also very cold but was the first day without any rain - started out overcast and kind of dreary but eventually the skies broke and the sun came out for the last several miles. The highlight of the day for me was the visit to the Wright Brothers Memorial/museum in Kitty Hawk. I had not realized that they actually made four flights that day , each powered only by the gasoline engine on the plane and each progressively longer than the first. They might have made a couple more but a wind gust caught the plane after the fourth flight, flipped it over and rendered it unflyable. I toured the grounds and museum with a couple of pilots - they were most interested in everything about the exhibits and it made it all the more interesting for me too. So today is a day of leisure and I'm taking full advantage. I slept in this morning, went out to a neat little coffee shop down the road a bit for breakfast and simply sat in the sun by the waterfront with a couple of other folks for awhile. I'm thinking of heading out for a short exploratory bike in few minutes but you can bet it will not be an 80 mile ride...save that for tomorrow.