Guess why NC leaves out the “outer” in the abbreviation for Southern Outer Banks?
We woke up this morning across from a busy yacht harbor protected from the ocean by Carrot Island, inhabited only by a herd of wild horses we are told we will see when the tide changes. Horses… tides? It seems the ponies appear when the tide ebbs to eat the plants along the edge of the marsh grass. We’ll see. It is 70° and sunny, so it is no hardship to sit in the rocking chairs on our balcony and wait for them to appear.
The two-day journey from Roanoke to Beaufort took two days and two ferry rides. The first, from the tip of Cape Hatteras to Ocracoke, is free and takes about forty minutes. The ferry weaves its way between shoal waters shallow enough for birds to stand in – those who aren’t following the ferry in shrieking clouds 
diving into the wake and criss-crossing over the decks. We saw the penned-up, not-so-wild ponies halfway down the island, stopped to follow a nearly birdless wildlife trail for 3/4 of a mile through stands of long-leaf pines and cedars on the Sound side of yet another long, thin island. The other side is all beach, stretching for miles and empty except for a few surf fishermen’s trucks. There is not much to see or do this time of year, but the beach smells good and is very clean!
The town of Ocracoke at the southern tip is not unlike an old Maine or Cape Cod fishing village. The houses are small, mostly shingled and quite close together. There are bikes and golf carts for rent, and a lot of people use them. There is not much to do except fish and go to the beach. We spent the night in a B & B whose owner had been invited to Little Cranberry Island in Maine by the Island Institute last November. He had also visited the school on North Haven, Jan, but didn’t remember meeting any pretty woman named Jen… He was preoccupied anyway with a female visitor who had come to decorate his B&B with white fake Christmas trees. Luckily, she had only finished two rooms by the time we claimed the undecorated third.
Courtesy of the US Navy, which built the Silver Lake harbor in the early years of WW II 
newer inns and houses cluster around the port from which our second ferry left yesterday to take us across to Cedar Island and onto the mainland again. The 36 miles or so of routes 12 and 70 that brought us to Beaufort ran through the region the locals call Down East. The miles and miles of marsh and shrub leave little room for the rusted trailers, semis and rundown shingled shacks that house the fisherman and backwoods population of a county that makes Maine’s Washington County look rich. Quite a contrast to Beaufort itself, which is the third oldest incorporated town in North Carolina after Bath and New Bern. More about this lovely spot after we have finished with the laundromat and begun to explore.
Hugs to all.
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