The OBX
The Outer Banks of North Carolina is the landmass equivalent of a trailer park. There’s a giant target floating right above it, or maybe it’s a flashing neon arrow, pointing the way for incoming hurricanes. It gets a direct hit every other year.
I’ve often wondered why anyone would build a house right on a beach. Apart from the horrors of sand in every nook and cranny (and I don’t mean just the house) there are all those waves coming at you night and day. Okay, true confession: I have a recurring nightmare about waves threatening to engulf me. No doubt Freud would have a field day, but I’ve always been afraid of the ocean. And that’s without a hurricane added to the mix.
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| Post Hurricane Irene in 2011. |
And just because I’m now more aware of this issue than I ever wanted to be, how do these beachfront houses handle their “waste water”? Septic tank buried in the sand? That then gets washed away? Pipes that ditto?
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| A somewhat unnerving cloud given what’s happening in the world right now. |
Still, in the non-hurricane season it’s a beautiful place to be. Especially at the National Park campground tucked into the dunes, away from all those teetering houses and summer tourist joints. I marveled at how anyone can run a business with the constant threat of having to shut it down and evacuate. And what about insurance? Those OBXers are a hardy lot. Or gamblers one and all.
Dan had recently finished David McCullough’s excellent book about the Wright Bothers so we went to the National Memorial at Kitty Hawk. It was a bit disappointing - replicas mainly, but given how often they must have to remake everything it’s not surprising. The original aircraft is safely tucked away in the Smithsonian.
In the spirit of the Wright Brothers, the Maiden Voyage of the Honey Pot occurred during our stay on the Outer Banks. And, as with Wilbur and Orville’s first attempts, it was not a total success. The dump station was a long way off - in fact you had to cross the busy highway and go to the marina opposite the campground. Can you imagine towing that stupid little porta-potty at 3 mph with trucks barreling down on you? Not for the faint hearted (me, obviously) but Dan was on a mission and off he went.
Unfortunately the tank was overfilled. Fortunately it was “grey water”. Let’s just say there was a trail.
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| In case you’d forgotten what a honey pot is in the RV world - it’s to offload waste water from your tanks when you’re not hooked up to sewer. You tow it to the dump station rather than pack up the whole rig and tow that. A good idea - in theory. |
I’m glad to say that was the only drama during our week of Deep South Decompression. The waves behaved, the dogs got to run on the beach, and I managed to keep the sand out of most of my nooks and crannies.
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| Evening light at the campground. |
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| And then a moonrise. |
Interesting RV life details we non-RV lifers don't usually have to think about! And spectacular photos!! A beautiful glimpse of what it's like living on the (coastal) edge.
ReplyDeletemy mom lived in Kitty Hawk. I've spent mucho time out there including on our recent trip. I kept wondering about insurance too!
ReplyDeleteI lived in Taiwan in the 1950's. No sewage system aside from benjos that the Japanese has installed, open rock lined ditches running along roads, which dumped into the rivers. Where there were no benjo ditches, house compounds had niches in the walls. The daily production of waste was placed in a bucket in the niche to be collected by the nightsoil man, in "honey buckets". The night soil was sold to rice farmers as fertilizer, which gave the rice fields a distinctive aroma, not exactly what you would imagine. The watery rice fields were home to entire ecosystems of fish, birds, snails, worms and other invertebrates, and parasites. My father had studied parasitology and my brother and I were thoroughly indoctrinated in avoiding the nightmarish parasites, including rules against never going barefoot, never eating raw food (unless it was soaked in bleach solution first), never bathing unless the water had bee "purified" first with Lysol, and never drinking unboiled water. But...what an adventure it was living there! Things have changed dramatically in 60+ years, but Taiwan is still a bit behind the curve in sewage treatment. Ah, childhood memories!
ReplyDeleteWe have been spots that I wish we had one of those.
ReplyDeleteGreat photos. Scary cloud. Doggies look happy. I never knew you were afraid of the ocean. The salt air and saltwater are lovely but I hear what you're saying about nooks and cranies. And, I have that same recurring dream of a threatening giant wave!
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