May 10 – Biking Around Ocracoke

We broke out the bike for an easy ride into and around town to gently get us back into being used to sitting on the seats.

The campground is 3 miles from town. The road between the two is absolutely straight and level. There is even a paved bike path on one side.

We had some rain last night and the morning looked a bit dull. This picture is from when we left.

Around noon the sun came out for another great day. This picture is from heading back to the campground.

We explored the eastern side of town. The captain on the boat trip the other day said that the town is divided into Pointers and Creekers and, jokingly, never the twain shall meet. The Pointers are on the west side of the harbour out to the point at the western tip of the island. I guess there is a creek on the eastern side of town.

As we road around some of the back streets in the village there seemed to be little craft and souvenir shops everywhere, far from the main street. I wondered how they would get enough foot traffic.

This one had a bucket of bubble mix and a wand at the door.

While Jennie went inside I waited in this comfortable hammock swing.

We needed to find some Wifi as Jennie had some heavy duty downloading of her audio books. An ice cream store offered password protected Wifi. We felt obligated to buy something to get the password so we shared some ice cream, even though it was a bit early.

Another store had the boat filled with conch shells, which I assume came from the Caribbean.

We biked out to what must be the ritzy section of the village where there were a set of canals so that each house had water access.

There were lots more many-leveled viewing areas on the houses. This one had a spiral staircase to an enclosed area.

So many levels on this one.

There were some huge cacti out here.

We had been looking for a place for lunch but everything was marked private. Finally I saw a sign for a community park. It turned out to be a baseball diamond in the middle of a wetland. I am not sure how environmentally friendly it was but I guess it was the only land available.

We sat on the bridge out to the field.

And the daily photosphere.

And a map of our travels.

After that we did a bit of grocery shopping and headed back to the RV.

I had seen a nice boardwalk out to the beach at one of the access points. We went out for a look.

The beach was actually busy, for here.

Jennie said she was going to just walk a short way up the beach looking for more shells. I sat and waited. Can you see her, FAR off in the distance.

She is inside this box.

A blowup of the box. She is still pretty small.

Eventually she came back.

We are moving over to Hatteras Island tomorrow via a short free ferry. The weather for the next 3 days looks pretty lousy with a lot of rain.