Monday, March 17, 2014

Banks of the Outer...



Well happy St. Patrick’s day… if you are honoring St. Patrick by raising an Irish beverage, a enjoy a cool one (NOT cold), and unless you’re in Ireland, perhaps Smithwick’s wold be a better choice than what passes for Guinness in the states (IMHO) courtesy of Mr. Pasteur.  Anyway, the music and company are good, so have fun

Meanwhile to get you somewhat up to date.. Saturday’s nice weather provided easy loading of the MOMSTER II (we did have to confirm with our neighbors we were NOT moving permanently)




And eventually we departed and struck out for North Carolina and the Outer Banks (cleverly abbreviated as OBX).   With some consultation of people more familiar with the place than us, we went down Route 17 through Virginia to Yorktown, across the York, then down to Newport News and its immense shipping yards



under the James River 



To Norfolk, circumnavigating around to Rtes. 168 to 158 and headed south to the beaches.




One of the things I do to amuse myself in the right seat as MFO is in command is to do grab shots of various eateries we run across.  I love the “Mom and Pop” places, and of course in this neck of the woods (poor analogy), seafood dominates with lots of Oysters!








as well as markets



and of course not everybody is immersed in seafood, so there are also places for the carnivores




As we continued south, we were struck by the similarity to our own Ocean City..  said in as nice as way as possible, there was mile after mile of surf shop after surf shop, tee shirt shops, kitchy places, sleazy looking bars (which may be okay), kind of like you pulled a string on Ocean and drew it out for miles.

Eventually however we left the commercialized area for


And the road changes from mile after mile of tourist traps to mile after mile of



Never having been here before I sort of envisioned a strip of sand, a road, and water on either side.  Well, all of those exist, but they are spread out enough that we could rarely see the water.  Road burrowing down a bunch of trees..

What “towns” there are tend to cluster so that you arrive in Rodanth, pretty quick you somehow are in Waves, and into Salvo with little notice.  Weird.  So after a little flailing around in Salvo we found the rental agency and got the key to our beach house..  

I think I’ll stop here in the interest of both of our time, and pick up the story tomorrow.  And to jump back to today (St. Patrick’s Day) while you folks up in Maryland are digging out once again, we have “high Surf advisories” and our seascape looks like



And since we’re dining “in” this evening we don’t have to worry about


DFD

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