I've mentioned this before, but this area is experiencing some very uncharacteristically cold weather. While driving south, I took pictures of where the ocean meets the sound, and how everything is in constant turmoil between the salt water and frozen chunks of ice churned up by the waves:
At the very end of Hatteras Island was the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. This is a great, quaint museum that's very tiny, but it's under construction and will soon be three times bigger than it is now. The museum is dedicated to the shipwrecks off of North Carolina's coasts and to Billy Mitchell's bombing tests which were done off the coast of Okracoke and Hatteras (to prove to the military that planes could be used to sink ships effectively).
But before we went in, there was a letterbox for us to find, and the directions started at this placard in the parking lot of the Graveyard of the Atlantic parking lot:
We found it! Marney is holding the letterbox we found (the box in my hand is our letterboxing supplies):
We filled out our information on the letterbox's journal and put our stamp in it:
And then we stamped our book with the letterbox's stamp. Pretty sweet.
This letterbox was particularly special because it had a Hitchhiker letterbox in it! A hitchhiker is a letterbox that you put in other letterboxes. When you find it you take it with you, sign off on it and then you leave it in a different letterbox. This Hitchhiker was especially cool because it was called The Battle of the Bands: Judas Priest. We took it with us. Fortunately, we had another hitchhiker we found in Texas, so we left it in the letterbox in the parking lot of the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.
Here's a shot of seven of eight sitting on a bench outside the museum. Nothing special going on here, just a cute shot. Did I mention is was around 25 degrees, and 5 degrees with windchill?
The museum was cool even if it was small. They found the recently (2002) rediscovered lenses of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Here's how stupid I was- I never even thought about the fact that lighthouses would use lenses to make the light more easily viewable.
There were plenty of displays that the kids liked, here they are looking at all the different types of nautical knots. We committed ourselves after looking at this to teach ourselves how to tie some really cool knots when we get home.
Here's everyone looking at another display. I've included this because I think it's the only picture that included Jen that was taken all day.
A giant bell. The bell was cool, but it sucked that they wouldn't let us ring it. Look... I get it, right? I understand why you don't want people ringing the bell. But we were the first visitors that even came to this isolated museum since December 24-- couldn't they just let us ring the bell? Apparently not.
This was the coolest thing I saw all day that no one else cared about. Do you realize what you're looking at here? This is an actual Enigma Machine recovered from a German U-Boat. These were the code encrypting/decrypting devices used in World War II. A real life Enigma Machine. That is so cool, I can't even begin to tell you.
After the museum we stopped to find another letterbox in area shown in the following picture. Unfortunately, the area where it was hidden had recently been washed away and the letterbox was gone.
But it was worth it to go looking anyways because we found this cool, tiny graveyard! These are the graves of Capt. Stephen D. Barnett and his wife Rebecca. They died in 1833 and 1859 respectively.
While we were looking for that letterbox, Jen and the other kids played at this play area which looked relatively new. It was cool because the substrate was shredded tires.
We got back in the car and went in search of our third letterbox for the day. We ended up winding through some beach houses on a tiny public beach access path to get there. There was this pier that was falling apart. I know it would be incredibly unsafe, but I would love to get out on that pier.
Hey! We found this one too! We left a second hitchhiker (not the Judas Priest one) that we brought from Texas in this one too.
To get to our next letterbox, we had to first stop at the Billy Mitchell airstrip. Surprisingly, there's no security here and we were able to just walk out on to the tarmac and look at the planes. We got some shots with them, but this is the best one. Remember this plane.
We drove a little farther and found our trail for our letterbox. Seriously, though, did I mention that it was cold?
We found it! I declared it lost, but then (as often happens), Jen took the directions and looked around. She points to a tree trunk and commands, "Look there." Mmmmm-hmmmmm. Of course, the kids look there and there's the letterbox.
Whatever. You know what's more awesome than me being humiliated for my stupidity? A toddler stick fight.
TODDLER STICK FIGHT!
Here we are stamping up the journals of this last letterbox.
Next we drove to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. On the way, we drove back past the Billy Mitchell airstrip and people were getting that same red plane ready for flight.
When we got to the lighthouse, we sat Van Go and ate lunch.
Here's the lighthouse with 9 of 10 standing in front.
The lighthouse displays and stuff were really, really lame. It was especially disappointing because it was a national park set-up, not some weak state park or something. The main "visitor's center" was nothing more than a stupid souvenir shop.
They had a display in the Lightkeeper's House, but it was tiny and really weak. So weak that I didn't include any pictures of it. Here's a shot of all the kids at the base of the lighthouse. While I was taking this picture, that red plane was circling us overhead.
Here I am holding the lighthouse in my hand. PSYCH! Just kidding, man! It's all a trick of perspective! God, I can't believe you fell for that!
After the lighthouse, there was a series of letterboxes (6 of them) that you had to hike into Buxton Woods to find, which is in the same area as the lighthouse. But when we followed the instructions on how to get to the entry to the woods (for all six letterboxes) you have to cross private property on a dirt road... with giant sings that say "PRIVATE PROPERTY" and "NO TRESPASSING." So we abandoned those. But I was pretty irritated because you should never leave instructions for a letterbox that require you to trespass, that's one of the big no-nos. Bad form, man. Bad form.
All the same, the day was getting long and we'd only finished half the things we wanted, so we decided to go home and we'll come back on Wednesday and finish the rest of the places we wanted to visit, including the life-saving station at Chicamacomico (which is the Algonquin word for sinking sands)-- which is important because you need to try to say it. It's so much fun to say. We repeated that over and over and over on the ride home. Chicamacomico. Ha!
We got home at 3pm, which is enough time for everyone to calm down before playing D&D tonight. Just to tie up all the loose letterboxing ends, here's a shot of the other stamps we got today.
Tomorrow: Fort Raleigh!
1 comments:
What a great day...good letter boxing. Rose of Sharon says hey and she is really enjoying reading your blog....
Post a Comment