Nags Head, OC and Tangier Island
Yesterday I drove to the coast, mostly to find a replacement pair of flip-flops I like and couldn't find locally. And, of course, with all the hard work lately I needed a break.
Kites at Ocean City, Maryland (not to be confused with Ocean City, NJ)
Sea Oats
WWII lookout towers along the Delaware coast
Red gables near Fenwick Island, Maryland
It's a little over two hours to the coast from Washington, DC. Our beaches are generally the handful in Delaware and Maryland, or if we want to go a little farther south, it's Virginia Beach and then on to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. Then there's the occasionally favored Cape May, New Jersey which involves a 70-minute ferry across Delaware Bay but rewards with its beautiful beaches and quaint Victorian homes.
Cape May, NJ at the mouth of Delaware Bay
The coast for Washingtonians (click to englarge)
(click to enlarge) A spectacularly crowded Delaware Beach, July 11, 2008
Most of my friends like the usually quiet Delaware beaches but I often prefer the kitschy atmosphere of Ocean City, Maryland. Like a cross between Coney Island, Las Vegas and Miami, it's garish and kinda seedy but it also offers what many travel writers say is the best boardwalk in America, a three-mile long extravaganza of American beachdom.
The Ocean City, Maryland boardwalk taken last year
The Ocean City boardwalk
The first beach I heard about when I moved to DC was Nags Head. That was the hot beach for the Capitol Hill crowd, and still is if you want to make a long weekend of it. Nags Head and Kill Devil Hills are on the Outer Banks (OBX) near Kitty Hawk where the Wright brothers made their famous flight in 1903. Kitty Hawk is nothing more than a big sand dune on a barrier island, perfect for plenty of predictable breezes.
Inland of the barrier island (what they call the "inner banks") you'll find an island, the actual site of Sir Walter Raleigh's 1585 "Lost Colony of Roanoke."
The North Carolina beaches
The name Kill Devil Hills dates back to the colonial era. Shipwrecks were common at the time, and many of the ships were transporting barrels of rum. Upon a shipwreck, locals would scavenge the ship and hide the rum they found behind the same large sand dunes where the Wright brothers later flew their plane. The locals said that the rum was strong enough to "kill the devil," so the dunes where they would hide the rum were nicknamed 'Kill Devil Hills."
Click to englarge this picture taken from the ferry in Pamlico Sound, inside the Outer Banks, with dangerous shoals and sandbars. The Pirate, "Blackbeard" was beheaded here after several ships ran aground in the sound.
Kitty Hawk, NC, one of my favorite photos, taken last year.
Stock of the 4-mile long Chesapeake Bay Bridge
On my way home, over the bridge - through a tinted and dirty windshield while driving
Section of a photo of the west side of the bridge, near Annapolis
Sand on the dune bridge (click to enlarge)
The famous Tangier Island
Tangier Island (population 604) in Virginia's Chesapeake Bay was first explored by Captain John Smith of Jamestown and Pocahontas fame. Lynn and I almost went there a couple of years ago but the ferry departure time wasn't right.
The tiny island community has attracted the attention of linguists because its people speak a unique Elizabethan era dialect of American English, hypothesized to be the closest example of the way the first English colonists spoke. Each of the original surnames and several of the present surnames on the island originated in the United Kingdom.
Turn off the waves
