By Shelby
This was another great week. Monday, we worked from Tidewater Community College’s Joint Use library. It was very nice, probably one of our favorite libraries so far. Interestingly, there is a naval base in Virginia Beach. We saw jets flying over the college all week.
After work, I surprised Spencer with a short walk along the Virginia Beach boardwalk, dinner at Taco Bell (one of our favorite fast food places), and a game of indoor glow in the dark 3D mini golf. The boardwalk was very cold, so we walked fast. There were a lot of Christmas lights set up, which I’m sure will look really nice when they’re turned on. Glow golf was very cool. It was ocean-themed and everything was painted with glow in the dark paint. The 3D glasses we wore made the flat painted decorations jump out. That night was cold, so we ran the car for heat. Generally, if the temperature drops below 40 degrees, we run the car. The Planet Fitness we parked at was open 24 hours and no one bothered us.
Tuesday, we worked from the same library. The library had a set of giant chess, so we had to play a quick game. I won by sheer luck. Neither of us know all the strategies of chess-just the basics of how the pieces work. After work, we went grocery shopping for our next meal, my dad’s chili recipe with mashed potatoes.
Wednesday went pretty much the same. After work, we drove about an hour north to a Planet Fitness near historic Yorktown, where we were planning on visiting Thursday. For dinner, we ate at Smokey Bones, a BBQ restaurant in Virginia Beach.
Thursday was a pretty busy day. In the morning, we drove to Yorktown in Colonial National Historic Park. This is where the Battle of Yorktown happened. This was the last major battle in the Revolutionary War. We decided to do one of the scenic drives through the park to see a few of the main sites.
Along the drive, we saw the British inner defense line and the Grand French Battery. We saw reconstructed redoubt, or earthen mounds. There were also a couple cannons, including a really short one called a mortar.
After that, we stopped at the second allied siege line and redoubts 9 and 10. Redoubts 9 and 10 were where Alexander Hamilton and Vicomte de Viomenil led attacks on the British and drove them away.
Next up was the Moore House. This is where terms of surrender were discussed between the British and the allies. Then we moved on to Surrender Field, where the British General Cornwallis officially surrendered his army to George Washington. Thousands of British soldiers marched down Surrender Road, either to ships back to England or prisoner of war camps.
Before moving on to our next stop of the day, we went to the visitors center for Yorktown Battlefield. They had a pretty interesting museum. There was a model of a ship we could go into with exhibits.
Our next stop of the day was historic Jamestowne, the first successful English settlement in America. To get there, we took the Colonial Parkway, a scenic road connecting Yorktown to Jamestowne.
We made several stops along the way. We stopped along the York River where we could see Powhatan’s Village across the river. Powhatan was the father of Pocahontas. We stopped at a creek to eat lunch when we got hungry.
As we got closer to Jamestowne, we made a stop along the James River. Unfortunately, when we got to the visitors center at Jamestowne, we found out you have to pay to get into the actual village area. We decided not to and just walked around the museum at the visitors center for free.
After we finished with the museum, we did a short scenic drive around the island Jamestowne is on. At one stop, we went for a short walk in the woods to a beach on the river. There were a couple boardwalks for cars to drive on to cross wetland areas. That was unique. They looked like oversized pedestrian boardwalks.
We made dinner at a small parking area next to the James River. It was a little early for dinner, but we wanted to finish making it before it got dark. We made chili with mashed potatoes. It turned out very good. After dinner, we drove south to Elizabeth City, North Carolina to sleep.
After showering at Planet Fitness, we set off for the Outer Banks, a series of barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina. It was a sunny day but actually quite cold and windy, not ideal for all the outdoor activities we had planned. Our first stop of the day was the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kitty Hawk. This is where the Wright Brothers flew for the first time.
Next up was Jockey’s Ridge State Park. Here we did a 1.5 mile hike through giant sand dunes. Jockey’s Ridge State Park has the tallest living sand dune system on the Atlantic coast. The dunes reach up to 100 feet tall. It felt very out of place, like we were in the middle of a desert, not right next to the ocean.
After our hike, we moved on to Roanoke Island, the original site of the “Lost Colony”, which mysteriously disappeared 500 years ago. Only the word “Croatoan” was found left carved into a tree. We saw reconstructed earthen mounds where the original fort from the settlement was thought to be. I’ve always found this part of history to be fascinating. To this day, no one knows for certain what happened to the colony.
The Bodie Lighthouse was our last stop before lunch. It was very nice looking. There was a boardwalk that led up to a wildlife observatory area. Along the way, we saw what we thought was a beaver in the marshy area next to the boardwalk.
After we ate lunch at the lighthouse, we drove on to Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. We did a short mile long walk between a couple ponds. There were hundreds of birds in the water. Most of the birds were migratory and had come from up north. We wondered if some of the geese were from New York.
Our next stop was the Haulover Day Use Area along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. We ate leftover chili and mashed potatoes there for dinner and then watched the sunset. The area had vault toilets and drinking fountains, but unfortunately the water was turned off. We had to drive a few miles into town to fill up our water bottles at a grocery store before we went to sleep. We stayed at the day use area that night. It was very quiet and no one bothered us.
Saturday morning, Spencer got up to watch the sunrise on the other side of the island. It was too cold for me. The pictures looked really nice. It was cool how we were able to watch both the sunset and sunrise over water.
After we got ready for the day as best we could, we went to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. It was another nice looking lighthouse. The ranger at the museum saw us coming and opened up early for us, which was really nice of him.
We caught the 10AM ferry to Ocracoke Island. The hour-long ferry was actually free and in the winter they run every hour. We got lucky somehow and ended up in the front row on the ferry and had a nice view of the water right from the car.
We got off the ferry at the north end of Ocracoke Island. We had a 20 minute drive to the south end where we had to catch another ferry to the mainland. The road was weird. The strip of land was very narrow and the road was surrounded by large sand dunes.
We had a little time before our 1PM ferry from Ocracoke to Cedar Island, so we went to the Ocracoke Lighthouse. It was shorter than the other lighthouses we had seen so far. Ocracoke seemed like a sleepy little village. Many people were traveling around it in golf carts.
After seeing the light house, we headed over to the ferry terminal. We got in line and then walked out to the water on a boardwalk. We saw a pelican sitting on a pole and diving into the water to catch fish. We watched our ferry come in.
Somehow we got lucky again and ended up in the front row on the ferry. We had another great view of the water. As the ferry left Ocracoke, we saw multiple dolphins swimming in the water and many pelicans flying around. This ferry trip was two and a half hours long.
After we docked at Cedar Island, we started on our 2 hour drive to Jacksonville, North Carolina to sleep at the 24 hour Planet Fitness there. Sunday, we finished our drive to Myrtle Beach to Spencer’s grandparents’ condo. We plan on staying there for Thanksgiving before going further south. It’s been a great week. We saw a lot of really neat historical areas and the beautiful Outer Banks. Next week will be a nice break from sleeping in the car. Check out our North Carolina page for more pictures form this week.
Fun Facts from Week 30:
- It is believed that the British may have played the song “The World Turned Upside Down” when they surrendered at the Battle of Yorktown. This is referenced in the music “Hamilton” in the song “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)”.
- The Cape Hatteras Light Station was moved in 1999 due to erosion in the area where it was originally located. The nearly 5,000 ton lighthouse was lifted from its foundation and moved to its new location on a rail system.
- The Ocracoke Lighthouse is the second oldest continuously operating lighthouse in the U.S. It was built in 1823.
- The famous pirate Blackbeard lived the last five months of his life on Ocracoke Island.
