Since moving to North Carolina 15 years ago we've only been to the Outer Banks once, for one night. This neverending pandemic we're living through seemed like a good opportunity to get in some quality isolated ocean time. I spent a few days trying to find a true oceanfront house that didn't sleep 25 people - nearly everything out there is enormous, and I had no interest in driving three hours for a winter beach trip if the ocean wasn't literally in front of my face at all times. Finally, I found it, a normal sized three bedroom house in Rodanthe. It's wildly expensive in the summer but quite reasonable in winter, about the same as we'd paid for the cabins in the mountains.
This is the best equipped place of the three pandemic trips so far. Once I got in there and saw it was nice and normal, I started working to convince Ben we should come back later in the winter.
It was dark when we arrived around 5:30pm - the last part of the drive on the narrow pitch black highway was oddly harrowing. I hadn't realized quite how isolated it feels out there. Anyway, when I got up in the morning and saw the ocean from our deck I was pretty excited. At high tide, there's not much beach between the house and the water. You are Right There.
The first day was stormy and windy, so we just hung around the house staring out the windows. It cleared up in the afternoon and we were able to go for a walk. A pumpkin had blown onto the beach in the storm.
It was really windy for the next 36 hours or so and there were tons of surfers and kitesurfers in the ocean taking advantage of the waves.
Our house was near the Rodanthe pier, which appeared to be closed for the season. Most things there close after Thanksgiving, but as of course we can't go anywhere anyway, it didn't matter. As in the mountains, we brought all our food with us.
Our little green house! The railing up to the lower deck was half buried in sand. Maintenance has to be a nightmare.
There was a full moon.
It was always so exciting every morning to see what the ocean would look like. Every day it was different. As the effects of Monday's storm subsided the waves really calmed down.
We drove to see the Hatteras lighthouse.
And kept going down to the tip of the island to get a lay of the land. We tried to walk on a short little path into the swamp but it was too wet from all the rain.
We stopped at a random place on the way back to go look at the ocean. There's one highway that runs down the middle of the islands, with dunes built on either side to protect it from the elements - so you can't actually see the ocean most of the time when you're driving. I really had not realized how deserted it was going to be. Even in nice weather we only ever saw a handful of people, and most of the beach is protected land so there are no houses anywhere around. You need to either walk a long way or drive on the sand to reach some of these beaches.
Here's Ben from the lower deck.
We got up earlyish one day and went to the Wright Brothers National Historic Site, about 45 minutes north. We learned that the Kitty Hawk area looks like New York City compared with the rest of the OBX - very Pigeon Forge/Branson-y, with miniature golf courses and wax museums and all that jazz. I was pretty glad we'd ended up in the middle of nowhere.
The Wright Brothers visitors center is the first National Parks visitors center ever built! We love a visitors center. We arrived just after they opened and there were only a handful of cars in the parking lot so we thought it might be OK to go inside, but I guess everyone arrived at the same time because there were about 10 people (all masked) hovering around at the initial informational areas. We stood there near the door for a few minutes and then realized "this is stupid," skipped to the end to look at the replica plane, then went outside.
It was really cold and windy. We learned that COVID masks are handy for keeping your face warm.
They have a little path to illustrate the length of the first flight. All the pictures of this event make it look like it was right on the beach, but there's no sand anywhere in sight now.
In the afternoon I sat in a chair with this view of the water reading a book while Ben went for a long walk.
Our last full day was sunny and the wind had died down, so we set out to do a 10 mile hike across the tip of Hatteras Island. It was really interesting through a bunch of different types of terrain, forest and swamp and beach.
There are no roads anywhere near this part of the beach, only sand.
Near the Hatteras lighthouse there's a small graveyard for two British soldiers who were killed by a German U-Boat in World War II.
The last sunset! I have never thought of myself as a beach person - and, to be fair, I probably wouldn't be interested in going in the summer when other people are around and it's hot outside. It's an ideal way to spend a week of winter pandemic lockdown, though. We're going back in February. See you soon, little green house!
