Wendi {at random}

There's something to be said for a one stoplight town like Hatteras Village. It's down at the tip of Hatteras Island on the Outer Banks. It's the end of the road, so to speak. The only way to get to Ocracoke Island farther down south is by ferry boat (which is free and leaves every 30 minutes in the summer). It feels like the end of the earth here, and that's just the way we like it.


We love Hatteras for its simple, unhurried ways. It lacks the congestion of the main drag of the OBX. There's not a McDonald's or K-Mart or Food Lion in sight. To us, it's a local's paradise. And now we're ready to be local.

Slap.

Ok, but we're not. But, hey, we're on vacation. So we're local for a week.




We've discovered this fantastic spot for fresh seafood. Vickie takes care of us, and has taught Eaglescout how to steam shrimp. Yum. Who needs to go out to a restaurant when Eaglescout is in the kitchen tossing shrimps around as he juggles fresh corn and slices (yes, he's slicing again) tomatoes that were not grown in China? And he's already done tuna and crab cakes. Yeah, we're eating gooooooooood.

Unfortunately, Camden's face was bitten by the Hatteras sun yesterday, so we spent Tuesday off the beach. We decided to drive an hour and a half up to Kitty Hawk and visit the Wright Brothers' Memorial. This is on the main drag of OBX, highly developed with all the perks of highly developed land: traffic, people, chain restaurants, K-Mart, Food Lion.


This is the view from where Orville strapped himself into the 1903 Flyer and flew off a giant sand dune to a space 120 feet below. By the fourth flight, the brothers had flown a whopping 8 hundred and something feet from this view. As interesting as all this historical stuff is, I have to tell you that we were far from impressed. Eaglescout and I were starting to feel like we were not on vacation at all. The traffic lights made us tense. The large quantity of humanity made us weary. The mix of carbon with carbon dioxide and generous doses of diesel and 4-lane highway, made us downright jumpy. By the time we left, we felt like we were driving home from a day of work. It wasn't till we crossed over the bridge to Hatteras Island that we breathed a slight sigh of relief. The relief settled in when the boys went to sleep, snoring lightly in their happy little room at the back of our beach house.


So, I've digressed.
Let me just say that lightly developed trumps fancy bells and whistles any day in my book.


In spite of how we grown-ups felt on the main drag, the boys were troopers. They walked every inch of the National Park that is the Wright Brothers' Memorial. Camden ate it up and wanted to come back the next day. Ummmm, no. Benjy took it in, not really caring about the historical significance, but just happy to be a part of all this humanity. We sacrificed our day for our boys. Martyrs are we.


Then we came home. Home to Cape Hatteras and our Ocean Cottage. For one week, this is home.