Dec. 10, 2008 – Charlotte, N.C.
The outer banks and a lighthouse.
My efforts to sleep have been confined to the car the last couple of nights and will be for the remainder of my trip. Luckily, early this morning the rain was pouring down very heavily and I was parked a few spots from a State Trooper, which made my mental state pretty well considering I was trying to sleep curled up under the steering wheel of a compact car.
The weather was gloomy, windy, and threatening to rain all day long, but I enjoyed today much more than I anticipated.
Home to the first flight
It was a slow drive to the outer banks because the highway speed limits are low and interrupted by towns every few miles. I made my way to the barrier islands with Kitty Hawk first on my list.
Since the Wright Brothers made their first flight at Kitty Hawk, I figured there would be some commemorative monument or museum, and I was right.
There is a large monument that almost seems out of place because of its size. The test flights are marked out on what is now a field, but used to be sand dunes during the Wright Brothers time. More interestingly is the Wright Brothers’ museum. It is filled with the actual parts from the original test planes. The museum also has many of the letters exchanged between the Wright Brothers and the mayor of Kitty Hawk, along with letters sent back to family in Ohio from the Brothers.
With this trip coming to an end, I stopped to think about all of the history that I have seen. It really is amazing. I think I learned more about America and its history in the three months on this trip than I did collectively in many years of schooling.
I wish it would have been a sunny summer day in the outer banks. Pictures are so much prettier when the skies are blue and the grass is green, but I’m so thankful for the opportunity to have visited the place, I found it very hard to spend much more than a second wishing for a better day.
Cape Hatteras
I am fully aware of all of the lighthouses in the area, so it was time I started checking things out.
I wouldn’t see them all, but I wanted to see two for sure:
The Bodie Lighthouse & Cape Hatteras
While at the gift shop back in Kitty Hawk, I decided to buy a refrigerator magnet. I have only bought a couple on this trip, but for some reason I felt the need to buy one in Kitty Hawk. I think it might be the sense of the trip coming to an end.
I like the vertical stripes of the Cape Hatteras stripes more than the horizontal of the Bodie lighthouse, but I seemed gravitated to the magnet of Bodie, so I chose that one. In hindsight, I’m glad I did because I met a remarkable gentle in the Bodie Lighthouse that will stay in my memory forever.
John Gaskill – 92 years old and still hanging out at the Bodie Lighthouse museum. His father was the last caretaker of the lighthouse. He grew up by the sea and spent most of his adult years in the Navy at sea. He and I talked for a couple of hours and if not for me feeling pressed to keep moving, I would have stayed for a few more.
He told me stories on what it was like growing up in the outer banks many years before it was a tourist destination, for that matter, before there were even bridges to the islands. His family lived on the mainland, but his father spent much of the time living in the lighthouse quarters on the island. During the summers, the kids would stay with the father on the island. Going back and forth from the mainland to the islands was done with a rowboat.
As proud as he was with his attachment to the lighthouse, I think I was more interested in stories of day-to-day life of back when he was young. He told me stories about drinking water before they had a well. They would drink rain water out of buckets set near the gutters of the house. They used to tap the side of the buckets to shake the mosquito larva to the bottom so they could scoop clean water from the top.
site of the first Wright Brothers flight attempts
There were stories about getting teeth pulled. The island had one doctor and dentist didn’t pull teeth in those days. There were no pain killers, John simply sat in a chair at the doctors house while the doctor latched onto the tooth and pulled with all his might.
He remembered fondly the days of being a kid and sneaking biscuits to dip in the sausage grease when his mother stepped away from the stove.
It’s amazing how bad the water they drank was and how unhealthy their eating practices were, but here he stood in front of me healthy, smart, and lively at the young age of 92.
It’s just more proof that our paranoid society blaming our obesity on unhealthy food when in all actuality, it probably has more to do with the quantity of our consumption, not our choices.
I enjoyed the couple of hours chatting with John and I would have liked to talk for a few more, but I had to keep moving.
I told John that I hope to be back within a year or two to talk some more and he responded with “you better hurry up, I’m 92 years old.” We both laughed and I was on my way.
While walking to my car, a couple must have noticed my Florida license plates because they stopped me to find out where I live in Florida, I told them Tampa, which brought on a smile and surprise. It turned out they were from Seminole, which is just across the bridge near St. Petersburg.
I had this happen a few times on this trip. On a side road in a field of monster cacti in southern Arizona, I ran into a van full of guys from Orlando. They were making a cross country trip to Seattle and back.
At Devil’s Tower, I met someone from just south of Tampa.
In Canada, I ran into a car from Pasco County, Fl., which is 20 minutes from where I live and near my mother.
The biggest coincidence was at a truck stop in Portland Oregon.
I had my USF (Univ. of South Florida) Bulls visor on and a guy kept staring at me as we were approaching each other. I actually was a little worried. Once he was sure what it was, he gave me the hand sign for the Bulls and yelled “Go Bulls.” It turned out, he was a truck driver, but lives about two blocks from where I worked back in Tampa. As big as this country is, it never ceases to amaze me how small it is too. 4,000 miles from home and I bumped into a virtual neighbor.
I digress….
I took a few snapshots of the Bodie Lighthouse and made my way down to Cape Hatteras.
I’m going to say that the Cape Hatteras lighthouse is the most famous North Carolina lighthouse based on how many times I have seen pictures of it in various places throughout my life.
It is the tallest lighthouse in America at around 200 feet. The stripes are diagonal and its light can be seen from 20 miles out at sea.
While the weather isn’t the best, it does present some nice “tourists-free” site seeing. I snapped some photos and made my way down to the beach for a different look.
The beaches were filled with people casting fishing lines. They are either some very serious enthusiast or very hungry because the wind was creating bone chilling ocean spray. There were fishing boast just off shore too. There must be some good fishing in this area judging by all of the participants.
I can honestly say “I know nothing about fishing.” I enjoy a good whitefish, but don’t think I’ve been fishing in 20 years. I have never been deep sea fishing, which seems to be something love to do back in Florida.
I took a few photos, made my way back to the mainland, just in time for a deluge of rain. I was very fortunate that the rain didn’t begin until then because my entire beach day would have been rained out.
I drove to the suburbs of Charlotte, where I found a nice rest area to sleep for the night. Only a few more days and the trip would be coming to an end.
