October 8, Ferries, Ocracoke, Cedar Island, Oyster Point

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Blueberry pancakes, bacon and oranges for a feast this morning! A comfortable 67 degrees as we greet the sunrise.  Today we are headed further south and must get a ferry to the next island - Ocracoke.  Later in the day we have reservations on yet another longer ferry to Cedar Island and the end of our Outer Banks Highway adventure. 

 Greg notes that we only drove 64 miles yesterday, and probably will drive about the same today not counting the ferry mileage.  We reach the ferry and learn that the 9:00 one has left and the schedule has changed a bit from what we were told yesterday.  There is no 9:30 ferry today and the 10:00 one will only take a few cars since a whole slew of dump trucks/road equipment has arrived and apparently has priority.  Hmmm.   So we wait.

We finally get onto the W. Stanford White ferry at 10:54 and the ride lasts about an hour. A few nice homes as we depart, and lots of pelicans and other birds on some small sand bars we pass. 

 Unfortunately, this leaves little time to explore Ocracoke since we need to be at the other end of the island by 12:30 for a 1:00 departure.( There are only 2 ferries to Cedar Island per day and this will be the second one.) Ocracoke has some wild ponies and supposedly great shelling, but this is all we see...

We arrive on time for the next ferry and  at least there is signal here, so we can catch up on emails and check the news, facebook, etc. while we wait. 

This time we are on schedule and the ferry is only about 2/3 full.  We walk around a bit but there really isn't much to see, though we do catch site of the Ocracoke Light House as we pull away. There is some seating inside and on a upper deck but only a few people leave the car deck.

There is quite a network of ferries all along the North Carolina coast, with many to individual islands. A few are free, others are not and, as we've found, schedules are sometimes erratic.  They are set up well, with no issues as far as low clearance - smooth sailing!

On Cedar Island, we drive through wildlife reserves with lots of wetland grasses and a few trees, and then into some sparsely populated areas.  Every house has at LEAST one boat in the yard or at a dock.

 We drive a bit inland, through a few minuscule towns, to Oyster Point, an older but very well maintained campground run by Fish & Wildlife.  Most of the spots have "reserved" signs, which surprises us because the way we read the website it sounded like all sites were first come, first served (FCFS).   But we find one that is open and  reserve it for the next two nights.  The camp host is sweet but a little paranoid about covid. Her site is taped off and she repeatedly tells me not to come any closer when I was 20 feet away, even though we were both masked.  Who knows her experiences, though, so...no big deal. 

Greg grilled hamburgers for dinner which were tasty!  We are near a large body of water - not sure if it is a lake or reservoir - but we think many of the campers here are fishermen.  There is a trailhead just outside the campground but it doesn't appear busy and is a bit muddy, so we only walk to the water for just a smidgeon of a sunset view.

Relaxing evening doing nada. We will explore more of the coastal area tomorrow and come back here.