my life my art my journey: Outer Banks

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Pea Island

We drove on Monday, did the Beach on Tuesday, and the Hatteras Lighthouse and Pea Island Refuge on Wednesday. I told you about the light house. Pea Island has the potential to be a good birding area but we hit it at just the wrong time, the hottest part of the day...AND if you're going there leave your pet some where cause they don't allow dogs on the trails. So we had to cut it very short as Casey was with us....I left ALL the windows open in the van and put my battery fan on for Casey...he was fine when we returned but we did a very fast look around... so that translates to us not seeing much of nothing!! They do get Black Necked Stilts but we saw none in our fast walk around.

Not many birds were out in the open a few Least terns, lots of Red Winged Blackbirds, and a few Egrets..

fritillary and brown pelican

This cute snapping turtle poked his head up to have a good look at us..

Eastern Towhee and Eastern Meadowlark were around...

The trail has this cool living arch over it in several spots...

and there is quite an accumulation of sand dunes along the road

Thursday we broke camp and this was our last day of touring the Outer Banks we had a couple more stops in mind before heading to cooler climes for the duration of the weekend.

Sights of the Outer Banks

My trip seemed so short! I need more...and it ended up being the hottest week since August of last year UGH! But we made as much lemonade as we could by enjoying the scenery around us.

We shot over the Intracoastal Atlantic Waterway it appeared to disappear into the horizon.

But actually this bridge, Lindsay Warren Bridge, goes over the Alligator River! It's 4.54 kilometers or 2.82 miles in length!

We passed through Roanoke Island, and then onto the spits and islands of the Outer Banks and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

from the campground

We decided not to tour the lighthouse, cause we had a great view of it from our campsite, but we did take a closer look

It was moved back from the original location

We had planned to camp so even tho it was HOT the WIND was constant so as long as we created some shade and found some ice cream shoppes we were fine! We camped at Cape Point CG. Its a National Parks run CG and its a first come first serve self check in. The other 'reservable" campgrounds were crowded. There is Oregon Inlet, Frisco, and Okracoke. The Cape Point CG has 200 sites and we were one of 3 there! SO we had the privacy we wanted the shade was in short supply tho.

bring your own shade

my little buddy,,,:o)

The draw is the beach, its not right next to the point so we drove about 1/4 mile to the public access point, there is a lot of 4 x 4 ing on these beaches (no ATV's)...so that creates DEEP sand...as hot as cooking oil and the surf was rough ,we did get a nice sunburn when we played in the surf..Casey did NOT like his cloth crate and eventually destroyed it! ;o/