In which Audrey goes exploring

wow. the past few days have been packed with lots of exciting things. I think that's how the whole semester will be!!

Here are some pictures from the house we went to on Thursday evening:



Saturday was pretty low key.... in the evening we went to a fish fry at the Outdoors Outfitters in downtown Manteo. My parents stayed at their B&B (Outdoors Inn, right around the corner) for a few days after dropping me & my stuff off, and absolutely loved it. They kayaked and biked around through this outfit, so if you're interested, ask them about it. I'm sure they'll recommend it highly. Anyway, they were having a free fish fry on Saturday, so most of us from the program went. It was a gorgeous evening - sunny and about 80 degrees. perfect!! There was freshly fried hushpuppies & fish as well as homemade slaw, cucumbers with some sauce, cake, and baked beans. NOM NOM. Once we were all there, we constituted about a third of the party, but it was so great. Several of us were interested in various things they do (kayaking, diving, etc), so we talked to Pam, one of the owners, for a while. My friend Chris was in the area from Chapel Hill for the weekend because he lives down by Hatteras. He's actually the one who convinced me to do this program! (he did it last fall.) So he met us at the fish fry, which was great, and then showed Nathalie (another girl in the program) and I a really cool secret beach at Fort Raleigh, on the north end of the island. A bunch of us hung out that evening - with a number of his friends, too - and had a lot of fun.

Sunday afternoon I bike up to Fort Raleigh to explore [the rest of] it. It's a national historic site where the so-called Lost Colony originally set up camp. Where'd they go?? It really is kind of interesting to think about. It was so cool to walk through the woods there and imagine 16th century colonists wandering around trying to figure life out in the New World.



After walking around there, I headed over to the Elizabethan Gardens. We're living in the apartments that the Lost Colony keeps for its performers, so we have Lost Colony company cards! Which means I got in to the gardens for free. It mostly consisted of trails lined by plants (some of you could have appreciated those more than I, but I did do my best to be interested in them)...but my favorite part was a sunken garden in a very distinctly English style. I had fun playing with my new camera...




There were also a couple groves of beautiful live oaks:


more garden.


statue of Virginia Dare, supposedly the first European child born here....but then she disappeared!!


Today, Monday, we went exploring... our task was to go to some random town on the Outer or Inner Banks, so my group chose Duck, which is on the very outer banks (as opposed to Manteo, which is shielded from the ocean by a barrier island...where Nags Head is), north of Kitty Hawk. It was interesting because it was very unlike the Nags Head/Kill Devil Hills/Kitty Hawk stretch, which is extremely strip-oriented development: strip malls, long straight strips of beach, and rows and rows of beach houses. Pretty unpleasant, if you ask me. Duck, though, was more like Manteo - more suburban feeling (which is, oddly, a compliment of sorts in this case)...houses were organized in a way that felt more like neighborhoods, and there were TREES! Everything - even gas stations and touristy surf shops - was hugged by trees. It made a huge difference. There was also a distinct town center/commercial area (CBD, if you know what I mean...), which gave it a more bike/pedestrian friendly feeling. (A gallery owner described the town to us in this way, and I was interested to see that the bike/walking 'lane' was 1. marked with an HOV rhombus (geometry! Jay-Z!) and 2. literally RIGHT next to the highway.

what.


okay sorry for the planning tangent.... We finished with lots of time to spare, so we headed up to Corolla (pronounced, for some reason, "kuh-rah-luh") to meet another group. We were both in four wheel drive vehicles, so we could drive up the beach after the paved road ends. We drove up the beach and then back into the inland of the island...where we saw some wild horses! One had an egret standing on its back but he flew away before I could get the picture. I did get a shot of a colt and mother, though -



We went swimming for a bit there and then Robb (who was driving our group) let me drive his car! So I four wheeled down the beach, which was so fun!! Never thought I'd get to do that. We headed straight to the Manteo airport because we were going FLYING!

in this little guy.


Jockey Ridge on a skinny stretch of the Outer Banks


o hai


ship wrecks RIGHT off shore


solid development all the way up the coast :(


these houses were once quite a ways back from the water but with the erosion rate of 7 - 10 feet per year, they're as water front as it gets now. most have been abandoned....probably a good thing, given that Earl (the hurricane coming more or less towards us) could wipe them out.


mix of tides just outside Oregon Inlet - the blue on the left is the ocean (Gulf Stream + Labrador Current) and the green is the salty-fresh water from the sound


looking south toward Hatteras


just inside Oregon Inlet


This last picture is actually from last night, but it seemed like a nice image to end with...

The vestiges of a simple but beautiful sunset on our beach. Reminds me of Monet.

. . .

In case you'd like to see more pictures, you can go to my Facebook album (even without an account!) here.