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The Outer Banks, NC

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We left Dublin on Tuesday, 17th September and flew to Charlotte, NC via New York. The next morning we picked up our car, a Chevrolet Equinox.


We drove to Raleigh, NC for an overnight stay and then on to the Outer Banks the following day. Our journey took us through lovely verdant countryside. Our first experience of the Outer Banks was the quaint town of Manteo on the island of Roanoke. We had lunch in the Lost Colony restaurant, which we discovered was named for the 115 English settlers, men, women and children who disappeared without trace in 1587. We then walked around the town and visited the Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse. 


We then drove over the causeway to Bodie Island and up to Kill Devil Hills where we stayed for 3 nights. It was extremely windy when we arrived and the ocean was very rough.



On Friday morning we visited the Visitors Center at the Wright Brothers National Memorial where we saw exhibits that reveal an intimate look at the life of Wilbur and Orville Wright, along with their inspirations and setbacks to achieving powered flight. Amongst the exhibits was a reproduction of their plane, which made the world’s first flight on December 17th, 1903. 


We walked up to see the 60-foot monument atop Kill Devil Hill which honours the brothers. 


There is a great life size sculpture, made of bronze and stainless steel which recreates the historic 1903 flight. 

The next day saw us drive south on Bodie Island and drive across to Hatteras Island. 


We visited the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse which is the tallest in America and the nation’s second oldest. We climbed the 257 steps to the balcony where we had great views of the surrounding countryside and of the ocean. There are 5 Lighthouses on the Outer Banks. 


As we drove through the villages on Hatteras we saw stacks of household items, fallen trees, pieces of roofs waiting to be collected as part of the tidying up after Hurricane Dorian. 
We had a picnic lunch in Buxton Woods and then went for a walk on Cape Hatteras beach.



On our way back to our hotel we stopped to see another of the Banks’s lighthouses at Bodie. 






We walked through the marshes along the boardwalks and fortunately we did not come across any snakes. All we saw was a number of great egrets and other birds we didn’t recognise. 

All in all we enjoyed our stay on the barrier islands, the Outer Banks. 

















Comments

  1. Bernadette23 September 2019 at 10:59

    Great to read your blog & looking forward to following your adventure,
    Bernadette

    ReplyDelete

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