Road Trip Adventure Part 2

As the clock hands crept toward midnight on Thursday, we were preparing to begin our latest and greatest road trip to the Outer Banks. We began by picking up Mom just before Midnight and off we went. The goal, to reach the Bodie Island Lighthouse before dawn, in order to take pictures of the light while it was still clearly visible in the wee hours of the morning. It sounds easier than it was.

We made it to the Bodie Island around 5:30 a.m. Got things set up and waited. Took a few pictures in the dark, testing out camera setting and such. As the dawn began to break we just kept snapping until around 7:30 a.m.



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Onward to Buxton to drop Carla off at the motel before continuing the journey on to Ocracoke. We stopped along the way to explore the beach and let Carla run about the beach for awhile. I wasn't quite sure that she would be up to it after her last excursion with the water chasing her.

While waiting for the ferry, this gull was quite the noisy fellow. He kept squawking almost seemingly to say, 'Look at me, look at me!' He did have our attention. The ride over was overcast and not too pleasant. Walter was quite happy to stay in the car. After we docked we drove around the island and got several photos of the lighthouse there before heading back to Howard's Pub for lunch.



The ferry ride back was quite a bit better than going over, the skies had cleared up and there were lots of birds to take photos of. The pelicans were skirting the tops of the water and the gulls followed the ferry. At the dock there were three Canadian Geese perched on tops of the pilings. They almost seemed out of place among the other types of birds.

We made back to Buxton in time to catch the sunset over the sound.

Then on a lark we decided to try to get shots of the Hatteras Lighthouse at dusk. It was much harder than the ones that we had taken first thing in the morning. Then again we had taken a lot longer to set up than we were able to in the evening.

We set up on Lighthouse Road to get these. We did drive around the area for a bit. We saw about a dozen or more deer on the edge of the road just after dusk. We went all the way up to the lighthouse to try for night photos. One wasn't all that bad, but it was terribly grainy. As we pulled around the parking lot we spotted around five deer in the field at the end of the parking lot.

We found out after we got back to the motel that Walter had broken a weld left front of his truck, so Saturday morning was going to be devoted to finding a shop to have it repaired. The remainder of the evening was uneventful and we all pretty much crashed having been up for over 24 hours.

I awoke on Saturday with a start, I had planned on photographing the sunrise, but had slept just a bit late. I did get a few nice shots, just not those as the sun comes up over the horizon.


The repair shop that Walter had been referred to in Buxton, didn't do welding, so they sent him to the go-cart shop. Which was closed. I did a bit of scouting on the Internet, but called Jeff who directed us to Golden Gears in Kill Devil Hills. They were able to fix the weld in no time and we were back in business. Walter was so much calmer afterwards, so much more pleasant to be around. We met up with Jeff and his girlfriend just a few miles further up the road and had a great time getting together. We spent the time on the beach chatting and letting the dogs play on the beach.

Since we had spent so much extra time trying to get the car fixed, we weren't able to get up to Corolla to see the horses, instead we traveled home via the Currituck ferry to Knotts Island. It was a lovely 45 minute ride across Currituck Sound. The weather was absolutely delightful and the birds were abundant.

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After we got off the ferry we drove through a wildlife refuge. The birds were everywhere. We stopped at an overlook where we spotted a couple of Canadian geese milling about on the grass. Carla was walking around totally oblivious of them until...I told her to get them. It was really all a ploy to get photos of them taking off. There was no way that she was going to catch, let alone know what to do with them if she even got close.

The one surprise was that we were able to get a photo of a Bald Eagle. I was totally surprised when I saw the shot. I didn't even know what I was taking pictures of at the time. The remainder of the trip was pretty much unphotographable. The light was bad and it is really hard to take pictures out of the windows of a moving vehicle.

All in all I would say that the trip was highly successful and we all had a great time. Can't wait to head back out again for another weekend of finding something to take great pictures of. Thanks Walter for being our chauffeur!