Day Fourteen, Part Two: Endless Sun on the Outer Banks
Distance: 45 mi.
Song of the Day: Mikey Chance — Stolen Chance
10AM: Mosey 1.5 miles to “Beans & Beads” coffee shop, ate scrumptious sugary muffins and ordered iced Americanos, the go-to espresso drink in sub-par coffee establishments. Today’s route promises a pristine, sunned, and completely flat ride:
Noon: Pit stop in Island Cycles to meet Jon, on recommendation from “Ziggy from the produce stand”, a remarkably mustached man who chatted with us while repairing porch on which we sipped iced coffee. Jon’s shop observed in state of wondrous calamity, somewhere between rearrangement and refurnishing, in preparation for bashing from June’s tourists. Lizzie wants to re-up on bike gloves, her padding worn down, Jon “I know the gloves are here somewhere”, finally spots ‘em, only has Bontrager Woman’s Fusion Gel — Size Large, nearly identical to those Lizzie discards!
Overhear a local surfer recommend eats at “Bros [indecipherable murmurs]”, I’m on the lookout for the word “Bros” through several towns. Spot it! In we go for burgers (Lizzie’s vegan) and sweet potato fries):
Riding Outer Banks cape hook to Hatteras is really fun because we can see dog-leg awaiting us 15, 10, nor 5 miles down the road. We listen to Arthur Lyman’s Exotic Bird, nothing like jungle bird calls and jangly xylophones to spur leg pistons. Button and Frisco quaint towns, shade looks nice but no stoppin’ til Hatteras! Arrive, I gawk at the Hatteras Island Ocean Center, which offers free kayak and stand up paddleboarding to visitors and even sports a solar power garden for community use! Into it.
We buy whole milk (no other options) at dilapidated store (“looks fresh enough!”) and eat cereal while Lizzie befriends two scruffy ginger cats. Sun beats down, sky cloudless, heavy shoes off, flip flops on, and we exit the final island stretch for the ferry to Okracoke, admiring the lime, orange and turtle blue shingled beach houses lining Route 12 as it withers to cease point in ferry marina.
4PM: Stack up with 28 automobiles (coastguard ferrimen’s count) and board the ferry. Sun and wind burnt, legs vials of citric acid, I ask loitering officer if I can sit in padded, shady seat by ferry lodge. “That’s unauthorized territory”, lots of guffawing, sit anyhow.
Not a lavish ferry with sitting deck, travelers depart hot cars & roam the interstitial spaces. We discourse with friendly Norfolkers, one man knowledgeable about channel we are sailing, which is ungratuitously choined the Graveyard of the Atlantic. We sail an absurd eight miles around 1.5 gap in land to avoid sand bars, pious Okracoke advancing and retreating from the horizon as the boat swivels and sidetracks to ferry terminus:
6PM: Road to Okracoke is magical. Judge for yourself.
