Hatteras Light

Its been blowing hard here on this narrow band of sand, which has kept me off the water for the most part. I did try flyfishing the flats of Pamlico Sound yesterday morning, wading out 100 yards in the knee-deep warm water, as laughing gulls mocked me and pelicans glided heavily by:



No, I didn't catch anything :(

We've been doing a lot of sand-management. Every time we climb back up into the whale the dogs, and us as well, bring back a load of sand. Its everywhere. We've got a ground cloth laid down at the bottom of the steps, and our door-mat at the top, but the vacuum is inevitably hauled out to suck up all that made it in.

We took a drive back up the island to the lighthouse for a closer look. It is our tallest lighthouse at 208 feet tall, made up of 1250000 bricks and an iron superstructure. Somehow they moved this massive monolith back in '99 to keep it from toppling into the sea as the land around it eroded.




Now it is Friday, and a band of thunderstorms moved in last night. So did a large party of tent campers, and we felt for them last night as the lightning crashed around us and the heavy rain came pounding down. We feel for them now, too, as we sip coffee and eat our breakfast, warm and dry, and they slog over to the bathhouse and wait in their tents for the rain to stop. I have thought sometimes about how we could have done this trip cheaply and simply by tenting, but on days like this, I'm so glad we're cozy in our home away from home.

In a few hours we'll move what will undoubtably be our shortest move ever, less than a mile away into the National Parks camp on the south shore of this island. Its beautiful and only $20 a night (as opposed to the $42 we're paying now) but has no hookups, so it'll be our first time "off-the-grid". Stay tuned.