May 3, 2017

It was another day of exploration.  We went south on the Outer Banks to Cape Hatteras, and a

few miles further.  The weather was perfect and the streets all dry and ready for the next high tide and windy day.  We finally got to the part of the Outer Banks that I had always seen in pictures, a lot of empty land, sand dunes, and of course water.  It is beautiful.  The best way to describe it is imagine a dark tan wall

on both sides if the road.  You can't see over it and when the wind is blowing you are sand blasted by it.

We finally reached Cape Hatteras lighthouse and it was worth the trip.  This lighthouse is the tallest brick

lighthouse in the USA, and the next tallest in the world.  Poland has the tallest.  To make things more interesting it was moved from it's original sight , 1500 feet back so it would not fall into the ocean as the 

sand is always moving away from the water.  There are 257 steps up, and we all made it to the top. The house was built in 1857.  After we went to the lighthouse we drove to the Graveyard of the Atlantic museum.

We learned in the past 300 years on the North Carolina coastline alone there have been 2000 shipwrecks!

If you add the coastline of Virginia and North Carolina there have been 5000 shipwrecks.  The last was

in 1969, a lot during WWII because of the German U Boats.  That is one reason there is an  Inter Coastal Waterway now.  We also saw, I thought a very strange way of carrying your fishing poles.  But here it seems

pretty common.  It is on the front bumper of you car or truck.  Not sure why, but a lot of people do it.

Tomorrow we leave the Outer Banks and head to Virginia. 

Cape Hatteras National Seashore

Goin' Fishin'

Where lighthouse use to be

Maps of shipwrecks on the Outer Banks

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse