Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 29, 1990 TAG: 9004290226
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SARAH COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It is a wide, beautiful beach and it is summer. It is hot sand, big dunes, fierce waves and salt marshes. It is a national park, with shipwrecks, lighthouses, wild ponies and a wildlife refuge.
Oh yes - and great fishing, surfing, hang gliding, horseback riding and sharktooth-hunting. It is also the beginnings of English colonial history in North America.
This national seashore, on the Outer Banks of Dare County, N.C., stretches across 120 miles of beaches and three islands - Bodie, Hatteras and Ocracoke.
One of Hatteras' famous distinctions is its particularly narrow Continental Shelf, which extends out about 30 shallow miles before the beginning of deep ocean. Big ground swells created by oceanic storms come inshore closer and faster with more energy.
The waves build up higher, creating excellent surfboarding conditions. According to park naturalist Marcia Lyons, the wave action along Hatteras shores also creates inshore parallel sandbars that act as barriers to outgoing waves.
Water rushing back out to the ocean "takes the path of least resistance," Lyons said, "and funnels out in between the sand bars, creating a strong stream of water" that is the rip current. This current is so powerful that it is almost impossible for a swimmer to fight it. "If you feel yourself being pulled toward Spain," Lyons said, "ride the current out beyond the sandbars, where the water dissipates. Then swim back in, using a different route. Either that or swim parallel to shore to escape from its path."
It is a deceptive ocean, one that has lured sailors to their deaths and earned the name "Graveyard of the Atlantic." More than 600 ships have wrecked off this coast, and the remains of some of these tragedies still can be seen half-buried in the beach.
Lighthouses like the one at Cape Hatteras, completed in 1870, were built to warn ships up to 20 miles out to sea. This particular one is the tallest in the United States, and the 1823 Ocracoke Lighthouse is the oldest operating one on the North Carolina coast. All are now closed to the public.
History seeps out of every sand dune along Dare County. This English colony, established by Sir Walter Raleigh, became known as the Lost Colony when its settlers disappeared. Their fate has never been discovered. Another legend haunting these islands is Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, who supposedly used the lonely site of Ocracoke to unload his booty. And several miles north of Nags Head lie Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills, where the enormous sand dunes provided Orville and Wilbur Wright optimum conditions to achieve man's first powered flight.
History overload is only one of the reasons that Cape Hatteras persuades us to camp here every year.
My husband and I are veterans who drove our first stakes into that shifty sand as a cheap retreat from college. Now we are honest wage-earners who choose to go back for the isolation, the miles of unimpeded beauty, and the irreplaceable feeling of satisfaction that only camping seems to give.
This is satisfaction: We are crispy around the edges from hours spent on that hot, windy beach; we are thirsty from swallowing saltwater (this happens when you body surf); we are tired from hiking to the beach and back with chairs, coolers, blankets, umbrellas, books, beer and baby; and we are very, very hungry.
The showers are cold at the National Park Campgrounds, but cold showers are painfully wonderful at 4:30 p.m.
And then you have that nice, cold something to quench your thirst, followed by grilled tuna steaks - the grills are provided at these campgrounds - or sauteed red snapper, or steamed and spiced shrimp, done over your Coleman Stove.
Evenings, quiet sounds from distant camp sites brush with the pounding, pounding, pounding surf. We are not in noise-stifling air conditioning. We are right there, on the ground, surrounded by wind-gnarled trees and sea oats.
It is pure enjoyment, if the conditions are right and you are a wise or weathered camper.
But it can be a fiasco. Twice, we have ended up in motels: once because our tent stakes were not long enough to withstand the high winds and howling rains at 2 in the morning, and once because we brought along our 15-month-old child, who didn't appreciate the cold showers or rain.
We have learned by some very nasty encounters what to bring, how to set it up, when to come and when to stay home. We have camped for 10 days in a row with nothing but easy living at our feet.
Still, it is the beach: when conditions become optimum, that's when the swamp bugs bite.
Plenty of powerful bug repellent should be first in that cache of prime items. Next are extra-long tent stakes; lots of nylon rope or clothesline to tether the tent against raging winds, as well as to hang out wet clothes; plenty of stove and lantern fuel; extra mantles for the lantern; and long matches in a safe, dry container.
A strong flashlight with new batteries is important in the middle of the night, and certainly most important of all is a weatherproofed tent. As an added luxury, a screen tent put up over the picnic table makes cooking and eating convenient and comfortable; it keeps the bugs out and helps to shelter the stove from wind. That way, the dinner will get done.
Early summer seems to be more temperate than August, September or October, when the last National Park campground closes for the year. August can be hot, damp and buggy, but daytime temperatures for May and June range between 74 and 82 degrees, while nights are between 58 and 68 degrees.
"The salt marsh mosquitoes are particularly bad in late summer and fall," said meteorological technician Mike Moneypenney, "but black flies are rarely a problem. What brings them in is a strong west or northwest wind blowing for two or three days."
What you do find, according to Moneypenny, are greenhead flies, "kind of like deer flies, that look like jets zipping in: they take a chunk and zip back out." Choosing a good campsite will help avoid some of the bug and flood problems. The best sites are slightly elevated so rain won't collect in the tent. Tucking a tent into the shade of a tree - neither abundant nor tall at Hatteras - will help keep daytime tent temperatures cooler, but bushes attract mosquitoes.
There are five National Park campgrounds along this seashore, and numerous private campgrounds throughout the Outer Banks. The National Park campgrounds are primitive and have no hookups, but do have modern rest rooms and cold showers, and each site includes grills and tables. Because they are well-maintained, populated with good people and manned by trusty rangers we continue to go back. The northernmost and smallest National Park campground in terms of campsites is Oregon Inlet.
Offshore fishermen frequent this camp because it has a marina. Salvo, the only campground on the sound side of the beach, is the next one south. Cape Point is right on Cape Hatteras and just south of the lighthouse. Frisco, just slightly larger than Oregon Inlet, is set among sand dunes whereas the other four camps are on level ground. It's between the town of Buxton and the end of Hatteras Island, where the ferry to Ocracoke Island may be caught.
The ferry ride to Ocracoke takes about 40 minutes, and the wait to get on may be longer than that, but it's worthwhile. Ocracoke is a small, quiet fishing village riddled with historic sites and several good restaurants. This island also is the home of the Banker ponies, decendents of Spanish mustangs, as well as a haven for migrating land and water birds such as sandpipers, herons, willets, cardinals, indigo buntings, grosbeaks and warblers.
Sightseeing includes Fort Raleigh and the Elizabethan Gardens on the north end of Roanoke Island, the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kitty Hawk, Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge next to Oregon Inlet, and shipwrecks scattered throughout the Outer Banks.
Sports activities are also plentiful here. Several tournaments are sponsored annually by Kitty Hawk Sports, a business specializing in hang gliding and windsurfing instruction and equipment. These tournaments include the Dash For Cash Easter Regatta, the Annual Morey Boogie Bodyboard Contest, the Annual Triathalon of Wind Sports (hang gliding, windsurfing and sailing), the Watermelon Windsurf Regatta and the Thanksgiving Windsurfing Regatta, which attracts enthusiasts from Virginia, Washington, D.C. and North Carolina.
Canadian Hole, a prime spot for windsurfing just south of Salvo, packs in our Northern neighbors for some of the best windsurfing conditions on the East Coast.
And then there's the old standby that nothing can replace: fishing. Offshore, freshwater, surf, sound and pier . . . rent a full or half-day charter at one of the many local marinas and catch blue marlin, tuna, dolphin and shark. Or stay inshore for flounder, blue, speckled trout, rock and croaker. Sultry evenings offer late-night shark fishing off the pier. Channel bass and sea mullet, king and Spanish mackerel, ocean perch and spot can be caught in the surf or off the pier.
According to Billy Beasley, longtime resident and owner of Billy's Seafood in Collington, in August there are more tuna, red snapper, wahoo and king mackerel - the fish he described as "white meat, and second door down from a wahoo" - than any other time. The flounder, soft- and hardshell crabs and fresh shrimp are plentiful from May throughout the summer.
All a camper needs is some good fishing equipment, or a strong enough will to leave the beach and buy some freshly caught treasure from the sea. That, a lemon or two, and a seasoned skillet. It's a good idea to keep an eye out for the fresh produce stands that line the highways to the Outer Banks - if you're coming from up north, U.S. 17 and 158, or from the east via U.S. 64 and 264 - because vegetables and fruits are more expensive once you're over the bridge and on North Carolina 12.
The hardest parts are setting up camp and breaking it back down. In between there's the evenings when families congregate over the water spigots to wash out dishes, the walks to the beach over crooked, weathered boardwalk among the blondness of dunes, and the peace that comes from having slapped that last mosquito, zipped the tent up tight, and settled back to listen.
by CNB