Ocracoke Day Trip

Last night at dinner the waitress told us a couple of places to go today, so we are off to Ocracoke Island, which is down the spit to catch a ferry to cross over to Ocracoke Island.
We stop at the Wright Brothers Museum to complete this first along the way.

Blue skies and sand dunes.

Some examples of the houses here - most are rentals from Saturday to Saturday.  Apparently there is a 20 mile back up to cross the bridge into Kitty Hawk on Saturdays as everyone tries to get in & out!  Thank god its only Thursday!



Further down we cross a very long bridge on to the next island - Pea Island Wildlife Reserve.

A lot of the road is driving through the narrow spit with dunes on both sides, ocean just over these.



Some more houses - these remind us of Galveston near Houston, in terms of colours and being built on poles.

And we finally make it to the ferry, some 72 miles further down the spit!

We have to wait for 5 ferries (about 1.5 hours) before we can get on - the ferry service is free and very popular.  The trip takes an hour to get to Ocracoke Island as it makes a large zig zag track.

We on our way at last and the breeze is welcome in the heat of the afternoon.




Hatteress Village in the background.

We pass other ferries going back and a dredge
continuously clearing the channel.

 This is actually a anchored boat and the people are walking out around on the sand bars far form any land.  Ocracoke Island is in the background and the sand bars are the reason for the zig zags.

 

We make it to the island and down to Ocracoke Village, but as we arrive the sky turns black and thunder peels out loudly.

We pick up a fridge magnet and head back to the ferries before the mad rush of every holiday maker doing the same thing and another long wait.  This time our timing is good and we get the next ferry fairly quickly and it fills up behind us fast.  Everyone is packing up to beat the rain storm coming.......

 Loading on to the ferry.



Off the ferry and heading up the spit - she is black in front as well as behind and this is the first time we have ever seen pink fork lightening.

We do not get thunder & lightening like this back home - ever.  It is so loud here - hard to explain.

Well, the rain bucketed down heavily as we made our way back up the spit - it was a long, wet drive punctuated by booms of thunder and flashes of lightening - the pink kind!

We stop at Mel's dinner for a cheap dinner as the rain has stopped & it is nearly 8pm by now plus we are still at least 20-30 minutes from camp.

This is a lovely camp but it is a long way from anywhere - we are heading back to Virginia tomorrow as we make our way towards Washington DC.