The Outer Banks, North Carolina

We spent the weekend at the Outer Banks, broadly a 200-mile stretch of barrier islands along the North Carolina coast with awesome beaches, one of which is Duck Beach where I spent a few Memorial Day weekends with the influx of singles ward people.  With the changing islands and sand bars it is also known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic with about 600 shipwrecks.  Owen got 3 new Junior Ranger badges this weekend and I got lots of my stamps.  Our first day we went to Kitty Hawk and the Cutterick lighthouse. Kitty Hawk hill has been rebuilt since the first flight so that it has the same elevation change as when the first flight took place.  The father of the Wright Brothers was Milton, so another famous Milton out there. Cutterick lighthouse is unique for it not being painted to show the red bricks. The second day we went to Cape Hattaras, Ocracoke Island, Bodie Lighthouse, and Jennettes Pier. Cape Hattaras is the bend in the islands with the spiral black and white paint pattern. Oracoke Island was still very damaged from Hurricane Dorian a few months earlier.  There were huge piles of debris from the damaged homes all along the roads. Bodie Lighthouse is about in the middle of the coastline with black and white parallel stripes. Around the lighthouse was a boardwalk we could walk out on to see the marshes with the fishes and birds. The third day we went to the Roanoke Marshes lighthouse, Ft. Raleigh, and the Roanoke Island Aquarium. The Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse is a screw-pile lighthouse similar to the lighthouses along the Chesapeake Bay.  Fort Raleigh National Historic Site preserves the location of Roanoke Colony, the first English settlement in the present-day United States in 1587. The Roanoke Island Aquarium was fun for the kids with a bunch of sharks.

Cape Lookout, North Carolina

We visited Harkers Island with the main visitor center for the Cape Lookout National Seashore.  This is a 56-mile long section of the Southern Outer Banks from the Ocracoke Inlet on the northeast to Beaufort Inlet on the southeast. From the visitor center there is a ferry that will go out to the lighthouse.  We missed the last one that day.