Day 25: Cape Hatteras, NC

The wind died down a bit and the temperatures were warmer, making yesterday a great day for Alea's easy 25 mile ride to Cape Hatteras.

Alea has a front row seat on the ferry from Okracoke to Hatteras.

We are camping at Cape Point Campground ($20, primitive, cold showers), where recently there had been some coastal flooding.  About half of the campground is still too soggy for camping, but we had no trouble finding a dry spot, as there are only five sites that are currently occupied, despite this being a fairly large campground.  With so few people here, we've been able to have Lana off lead most of the time, so she thinks this is a pretty awesome place.  We have a view of Cape Hatteras lighthouse, the second tallest lighthouse in the world and probably the most recognizable lighthouse in the US (thanks in part to it showing up on a US postage stamp in the 1970s).  

Our camper battery was seriously depleted when we arrived, since it had been four days since we were last on shore power.  There was power enough for everything but the refrigerator, so we it was necessary the previous night to plug it in to the van to keep things cool.  We had fired up the generator the day before in order to charge the onboard battery, but we shut it down after our electronics were fully charged (about two hours).  And since we are driving less than an hour a day, it doesn't get much of a recharge from the van.  

We checked the owner's manual, and it looks as though when the battery is so depleted we need to run the generator for 8 to 10 hours to get a full charge.  That would give us enough power to keep the refrigerator running for about two days.  So I think that roughly translates to burning a gallon of gas for two day's worth of battery power.  Or about a dollar a day.  That is useful information, as we've been unsure how long we needed to run the generator in order to keep everything powered up.  Since it will be at least a couple more days before we are back on shore power, we will need to gas up the generator, as we will need to run it quite a bit.

I saw something last night that I haven't seen in about forty years - fireflies, or lightning bugs.  We used to see zillions of them in the 60s when we visited my aunt's house in Parsons, Kansas.  But they don't seem nearly as common anymore.  There were only a few out last night, but hopefully we'll see more over the coming days and weeks.