Days 23 & 24: Okracoke, NC

The blustery weather subsided and it warmed up for us on Monday and Tuesday.  We had fair winds leaving Oyster Point and much of the 46 mile ride was on freshly paved roads with low traffic volumes.

We were wedged in on the ferry to Okracoke.

We are at Okracoke Campground ($28, primitive camping with cold showers) for a couple of nights, in a campsite just behind the beach dunes and next to a path to the beach.  Since we had been on battery power for the previous two nights, the short drive to our new campsite wasn't enough to fully recharge our nearly drained camper battery.  So we had the generator out for a few hours in order to recharge it and our electronics.  It looks as though we'll be using that a bit over the coming week, as all the National Park Service campsites on the Outer Banks (OBX) are primitive.

There are no campfires allowed in the campground, but they allow campfires on the beach, and dogs are also allowed on the beach (this is the first NPS campground we've seen where there are so few restrictions on where we take the dog, as long as she is leashed).  So we loaded up our wine, chairs and a 2 hour firelog and had a beach campfire last night. 

Hiking the ball in the sand, Lana's favorite beach game when she can't get us to play with her.

On the way there, we stopped by at Joel & Mercy Jacobsen's big diesel pusher.  We had met them a week or so ago at Wishing Well Campground just as we were getting ready to pull out.  We then camped across from them at Cedar Point Campground, and now they are a half dozen spaces down the road from us here.  They roll with their mascot, Bill the Goat.

Bill the Goat.

We haven't had the greatest experiences with the owners of such huge rigs.  Many that we've met seem to have worked longer than they should have, bought the most expensive rig they could find for their very first RV and have no clue how to enjoy their retirement.  Joel and Mercy have broken that mold.  

They started out owning Casita campers, a tiny fiberglass camper with a very loyal following (it's generally owners of tiny campers like Casitas, Scamps, A-Liners and the like that we always seem to hit it off with).  From there, they owned a string of RVs, generally motivated by a desire for a more optimal bed arrangement.  That is a  scenario we hear about often from other RV owners, since that is where they spend one third of their time - for many people, if it less than an optimal arrangement, it quickly becomes an unbearable issue.  At one point a friend of his told him to quit futzing around and just buy the biggest RV he could afford, which he did.

So we had our beach fire last night and invited them to come and join us, which they did.  So we asked Joel what he had done for a living.  The short answer was that around 1970 he bought a 1957 school bus that he converted into their home-on-wheels, and towed a 1940 panel van behind it.  His roaming in the bus eventually led him to get into selling composting toilets, and he did quite well with that.  They raised two daughters in that school bus and canned their own food, etc.  We would have loved to have heard more, but our log didn't last long enough.  Hopefully we'll run into them again somewhere down the line.

Enjoying the last rays of the day...

The blustery conditions came back today with a vengeance.  The winds kicked up in the middle of the night, with gusts at least up to 25-30 mph.  Around noon a gust ripped the nylon wind wall on our REI Alcove shade structure (which we had set up yesterday), a clear hint that we should have taken it down hours earlier.  I patched the rip with some duct tape, front and back, and then sewed the layers of duct tape together.  It may not look elegant, but I suspect it will hold better than before

Today has been a day of trying to find ways to stay out of the wind.  There is blowing sand on the beach, so it no fun being out there.  So between our walks with Lana we spend much of our time huddled in the wind shadow created by the open galley hatch.  The wind should subside by tomorrow.