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{ Author Archives } Katie & Dan Hinckley

Tide, Wind and Thin Water

In the course of the visit we asked what the average range of the tides in the Sound is, and got one of those fun reactions that makes you realize you are REALLY out of your range: Essentially, there are no tides in the Sound; the outer banks being such a complete barrier, with few inlets, block any tidal effect.

…The pressure of that wind-driven tidal wave with no room for it to escape through the two or three inlets meant that it created a whole new inlet and washed across the banks from inside toward the ocean. … For an image of how this works, consider a big washtub filled to about 4″ from the top; pick one end up slowly until the water reaches the edge, then drop the edge you’ve picked up; what happens?

… Add to this that Pamlico Sound is essentially nowhere more than about 20 feet deep, and you can begin to grasp what happens when the wind blows at hurricane force across the ocean-equivalent of a puddle 1″ deep.

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2011 11 15 North Carolina Comments (0)

OBX to SBX

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. … 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. … Courtesy of the US Navy, which built the Silver Lake harbor in the early years of WW II D7K_9973 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 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.

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2011 11 14 North Carolina Comments (0)

Birds and Bear

The trips are inexpensive, and the beauty of them is that you show up at the time and place specified and you’re taken in hand by experienced (well, mostly – we had one exception), led to the places where the action is, and are in the company of others who are interested in the same kind of experience.

…By the time we joined him, he had two powerful scopes focused on an immature Peregrine falcon on a sand dune. IMG_6525 He then turned one of the scopes around and showed us three terns – a Forster’s, a Sandwich, and a Royal, all standing in a line at the water’s edge.

…By this time, we were late back and couldn’t stop for the truly magnificent sight of hundreds of pintail ducks feeding in flooded fields on the other side of the road, so there was no way of verifying the presence of other kinds of ducks among them. D7K_9752<D7K_9704 Friday Dan went off in the afternoon for a WoW adventure billed as a walk through tidal swamps. … Also seen: American Oystercatchers D7K_9833 and a flight of Tundra swans incoming from Canada to their wintering grounds in Pea Island NWR: a magnificent sight in the setting sun and honking to each other as they lined up for the approach.D7K_9801 All in all, a terrific, well-organized week of seeing beautiful birds and places, in good company, with no lines at restaurants (the few remaining open that is), all this by the ocean.

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2011 11 11 North Carolina Comments (0)

Roanoke Island, Part 1

It turns out that while the **paved** highway 12 ends at Milepost 12 at Corolla, NC, the State of NC considers that the beach from there north to the Virginia line is Beach Highway 12: it’s a state highway: police cars, state highway regs apply, speed limits parking rules, etc. D7K_9488 Not only that, but about 8 or 9 miles up there, there is an unincorporated town named Corova (Caro[lina] + Virgini[A]) back in the dunes: a fire and rescue department, post office delivery routes, power lines, all set in the midst of these dunes and sand roads, as if it were perfectly normal to live out there where the only access is via the beach. Wikipedia doesn’t quite get it right , and Corova’s site is more of a promotional effort, but you get the idea: there are a massive number of HUGE houses built back there in the dunes, houses on the order of 5000+ sq. ft., which rent to large numbers of people, or a big family group, who share the cost for a week or more.IMG_6436 We took the two-hour trip and headed off in a 4-wheel drive to go see what you expect to be wild horses in a wild location, only to find them grazing on the lawns and under the carports of houses in a beach suburb; very dislocating! … The state road did not actually reach beyond Duck until 1957, and a large number of residents of Corolla commuted up the beach every day to work in Virginia, as it was (and still is) far shorter by that route than via the state highway system. Because there are now fences at the Virginia line (and at Corolla) to prevent the wild horse populations from expanding north or south, Virginia issued permits to 60 or so residents of Corolla who are still allowed to commute to their jobs via the beach and to pass through the gate in the fence at the NC/Virginia line.

2011 11 09 North Carolina Comments (0)

From Virginia into North Carolina

What was more fun was the way the center was situated: it was right off Route 17, and right on the edge of the Intracoastal Waterway; on the west side of the parking area were docks for boaters on the ICW. IMG_6332 When we walked into the center, the woman asked if we were off a boat – you get an idea of how seedy (or yacht-y, take your pick) we were looking! … We ended this leg at Elizabeth City for lunch, where there were a few ICW’ers tied up to wait out the Northeaster that was full of rain. D7K_9335 We spent the next two nights in Historic Bath, North Carolina, with a side trip to Washington and New Bern, NC, and to Goose Creek State Park. … We took a wander on a well-done boardwalk in Goose Creek State Park, and while the season wasn’t the best for wildlife viewing, we did manage to find a Yellow-Rump Warbler and a hairy woodpecker. D7K_9365 IMG_6373 D7K_9369 Bath had a small marina with a lot of undistinguished plastic clorox bottles in it, but it had also been homeport to a gorgeous old Herreshoff sloop, Margaret ( more here ), which had been carried ashore when her chain broke during hurricane Irene. … In the process, we asked them what the normal range of the tide is in the Sound and were fascinated to learn that because the barrier islands so effectively insulate the Sound from ocean tides, it is the wind which controls what appears to be tide: a strong easterly drives the Sound water up into the rivers and creeks; a westerly drains them out and piles up the water against the barrier islands, and in the case of really strong westerlies, cause a splash-over from the inside of the barrier islands into the ocean.

2011 11 07 North Carolina Comments (0)

Yorktown

The battle at Yorktown was a critical event in the life of the USA-to-be, but it’s hard to get a grasp of it on the site: it’s a battlefield memorial, with lots of old emplacements and remains but little life to it. There is a hideous monument put up after decades of procrastination by Congress, the shaft of which is of Maine granite (but we didn’t learn which quarry).D7K_9318 On the way in to Yorktown we stopped first at the Virginia Victory Center, and yes Virginia, it is as bad as it sounds; if you ever go to Yorktown, give this a miss. … We left early, and one of the staff was clearly so distraught that we would abandon their narrative in midstream that she said we would be missing the sunken ships in the basement (or somewhere…..); we thought that we all have enough sunken ships in our basements and left. At the National Park Service site we took a short foot tour of the historic houses of Yorktown, and the NPS interpreter was terrific: great sense of humor, knowledgeable and with the capacity to blend past and present; a rare treat, as the visitor interpretive trade is often given to earnestness, or worse.

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2011 11 03 Virginia Comments (1)

Williamsburg

Rather than sty in a hotel or B & B in town, we reserved a house inside the historic village and were given an upgrade to a cottage that fronts on the Duke of Gloucester Street in the heart of this amazing reconstruction of an eighteenth century town. … The town lives all day long in front of the house: bullock carts, ladies in costume with baskets, crowds going to re-enactments in front of taverns that sell real ale and real food. Beautiful trees sport fall colors as girls and boys playing fife and drum march up and down with serious purpose. IMG_6247 D7K_9236 D7K_9244 IMG_6289 IMG_6290 IMG_6295 IMG_6301 D7K_9313 There is a streaming video clip here of the fife and drum corps. … and others who fought at the Old North Bridge, it was moving to hear Virginians act out their admiration for the New Englanders who drove the British from Boston, and called for Virginians to join them in New York.

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2011 11 03 Virginia Comments (0)

Fredericksburg

As we have wandered south we have been fortunate to have a series of friends who have kindly taken us in for periods ranging from 1 to 4 days, and who, in some cases, spend considerable time showing us the local sights. … So when we told Jerry and Ellen we were passing though Virginia nothing would do but that we spend the night, despite them just having returned from a three week trip to England a few days before! Jerry and Ellen gave us a personalized walking tour of downtown Fredericksburg, and Jerry showed us what he considers to be the most important monument in the US: to the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson. IMG_6200 IMG_6199 There is a monument to Mary Washington, George’s mother, a small, very well-done museum to GW’s friend, Monroe, who had an office in what is now a small museum, and a farm across the Rappahanock where GW grew up. … We are essentially giving the Civil War sites a pass on this trip, both because neither of us is fascinated by it and also because once you start to visit the Civil War sites, it’s a lifetime’s occupation, so we’ll do it in another lifetime….

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2011 11 01 Virginia Comments (0)

From Warm Springs to Cold Snow

This entry will cover a fair amount of ground, beginning with our travels from Warm Springs to spending a night in Staunton (called “Stanton” locally), traveling up onto Skyline Drive, spending the night at Big Meadow, and finally arriving to spend a night in Berryville with Polly and John Crawford and awakening in the morning to 2″ of wet snow on the ground!

…It turned out to be a little after the peak color season so we had the road very much to ourselves, picnic-ed in a deserted picnic ground (even the bears had left as there were no more soft touches to be found cooking lunch for them. One of the wonderful features of the drive was the huge variety of trees to be seen not only along the road, but out on the ridges and hills and down into the valleys; you could see by the patches of color that it is a wonderfully mixed deciduous forest, full of trees which we do not know at all – very frustrating not to be able to identify a third of the trees we were seeing.

…This is an excellent museum, with very well done displays of the cultural history of the area and a painting gallery full of little treasures, with two Gilbert Stuart portraits, and others by Constable, Gainsborough, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Guardi and several others; a wonderful treat in an unexpected place.

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2011 10 31 Virginia Comments (0)

Warm Springs and Hot Springs, VA

Leaving Charlottesville we wound our way by small roads over the Shenandoah to Warm Springs. One of the prettiest stretches was along the Rockfish River Valley: it looked a lot like Switzerland in the sense that everything along the road was tidy and well organized – even the garages! Then the route west over the […]

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2011 10 27 Virginia Comments (0)
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