The Tarheel State

My first excursion into north carolina happened in the summer of 2003. We went to the famed outer banks (see my outer banks pics), specifically kill devil hills, to check out the beach, the wright brothers stuff, and even the cape hatteras lighthouse.

wednesday, july 2
We headed south along the coastal route rather than interstate 95. This is a much more pleasant drive, and a little quicker that the traffic jam prone interstate 95. Plus as a bonus you get the chesapeake bay bridge-tunnel! But by the time we arrived, it was raining cats and dogs. We had lunch at the awful arthur's, which was pretty good and a fun, crowded family restaurant.

thursday, july 3
Today the weather cleared, so we headed south to the cape hatteras national seashore. I climbed to the top of the lighthouse, and was really huffing and puffing by the time I made it to the top! On our way back toward kill devil hills, we checked out some of the dunes along the way. We had lunch at the weeping radish in manteo, which is a bavarian beerhouse. I had potato pancakes with sour cream and applesauce, which went nicely with my brew! We spent a few hours on the beach, but the water was just a bit too cold to really be worthwhile. At night we sampled kill devil's frozen custard, which is made the good. old fashioned way.

friday, july 4
In the morning we headed over to the wright brothers national memorial, on a hill right almost directly across the street from our motel. They have a pretty extensive display on the history of aviation, a wall of plaques commemorating some of aviation's pioneeers, and a replica of the wright flyer. Outside there are markers on the ground indicating the distance of each of the wright brothers' early flights, which are much shorter than you would think!

Again the weather didn't exactly cooperate at the beach or pool. While is was warm out, the water temperature was brisk. At night we played miniature golf at lost treasure golf, where you have to take a short miniature train ride to get to the start of the course! Then we searched in vain for a restaurant that was still open at 10:00 PM. Not easy! We settled on a non-descript pizza joint.

saturday, july 5
Before we left town, we checked out jockey's ridge state park, which has some incredible dunes that are naturally created. Lots of hang gliding and wind activties here, although we were content to walk to the top of the dune and then back down again. Then we headed off to williamsburg and busch gardens. The lines were as you would expect on the 4th of july weekend: incredibly long in a very humid 90 degreee weather. We cut short our stay at the park to go back to our motel and relax at the pool. We had dinner at an excellent steakhouse near downtown colonial williamsburg.

sunday, july 6
We went to mass in a very modern st. bede catholic church, a round structure with the altar in the middle and everyone sitting around it. Then we had breakfast at a pancake house whose name I can't recall, which was quite an operation on sunday morning! We headed north towards home. Our final stop was dinner at english's restaurant, which looked like an ordinary diner but had just the most delicious chicken I've ever had!