Cedar Point

Our first campground on the trip was Cedar Point in the Croatan National Forest. It's not on the Outer Banks, but was a good place for us to stop for a couple of days before catching the ferry over to Ocracoke. This is a National Forest facility and, as usual, is very well run. Our National Parks and National Forests are the finest things ever created by our government. Hands down. All of that wonderful recreation to be had for a very low fee that helps to keep everything in good shape. I can't say enough good things about our Parks and Forests.

Cedar Point has power hookups for trailers and RVs, but not water hookups. It does provide a very beautiful bathhouse with flush toilets, sinks, and hot showers. So even if you don't have an onboard water system in your trailer, you can still take hot showers to wash off the sand and grit from the trips to the beach!

There is a lot to do and see in the vicinity of the campground. Nearby is a very nice state park (Hammocks Beach) and the commercialized Emerald Isle where you can find beach access just to go swimming or picnicking or surf fishing. In addition, Cedar Point offers access to the nearby marshes, creeks, and bay for kayaking and fishing. Plus, there are some good hiking trails.

Each campsite is paved and offers lots of room.

Here we were, all set up and ready to relax.

The "bedroom"! Set up for movies. We watched several films in the evenings when we returned from exploring, swimming, and kayaking.

Part of the Cedar Point Tideland Trail. About one mile in length. Very beautiful and right at the edge of the campground.

Sometimes I forget how beautiful the marshes can be.

On the trail as the sun was beginning to set.

Carole fires up the coals for dinner!

Carole is the best campground cook around! This meal was cooked all in foil!

On the Cedar Point Tideland Trail.

Very Little Wildlife

One big disappointment for me on this trip was a lack of wildlife. I had always heard great stories about the variety of bird life on the Outer Banks and was looking forward to spotting some rare species. Also, since we were going to be in the Alligator River Wildlife Refuge for one day I was thinking we would see some black bears (they're thick there) and maybe even a Red wolf (their numbers are growing in the Refuge).

But we saw very little in the way of wild creatures. Oh, we spotted the usual suspects: White-tailed deer, sliders, pelicans, osprey, red-winged blackbirds, terns, sandpipers, and the like. But nothing to get us excited. I've been told we were there at a good time to spot good numbers and ranges of animals...but the luck was not with us, in that respect.

Apparently it was egg-laying season for snapping turtles. To that end, we did manage to rescue two snapping turtles from very dangerous journeys across the highway. In both cases I pulled off the road and ran back to gather them up and transport them to a safer location. One of the turtles was rather small (I picked her up by the tail and placed her in a sand bucket), but the second one was pretty darned large and I had to corral her into a box and place her in the back of the truck. But we managed to take them to good, safe spots away from the road where they could find both shelter and nesting places.

The small snapping turtle in the sand bucket.

A final portrait before I showed her the pond.

As soon as she saw the water...she was off!

Splash!

"HA! HA! You can't catch me now, human!"

"I'm out o' here!"

"The point of no return!"

And then, all but invisible.

Carole cheers me on from the boardwalk above the pond.

Outer Banks Lighthouses

One of the things we wanted to do while on the Outer Banks was to see as many of the historical sites as possible while we were there. The area was among the first places to be settled by Europeans, so there is quite a bit to see in that respect. High on our list were the four big lighthouses on the main parts of the Outer Banks islands. We were able to take care of seeing all four of these buildings, each of which is very impressive and seem to be in good repair and easily accessible.

Of the four lighthouses, the one that was most difficult to see was the one on Ocracoke Island. It's the smallest of the houses, but is surrounded by private property and has almost no parking. There is only enough space for four autos to park there, and no space at all if you have an RV (as we did). Try to park anywhere else and the notices to have your vehicle towed are all too apparent.

We ended up parking the truck and trailer beside a shop that was out of business. But even though it was shut permanently, we still almost got into trouble. The owner apparently lives down the street from the building and saw us park beside the shuttered business and had arrived on the scene just as we got back and drove away. We just missed having a tow truck pull up and cause us much despair.

The Ocracoke Lighthouse. Surrounded by private property. Not the friendliest of the lighthouses to try to visit.

The Bodie Island Lighthouse. A National Park Service location and with ample parking opportunities.

The Currituck Lighthouse. This is on the far north of the island at Corolla. Not owned by the National Park Service, but by the local government, apparently. There is plenty of parking and easy access and the lighthouse is part of a larger historic district. It's all very beautiful and peaceful, but the northern part of the Outer Banks is overdeveloped and extremely overbuilt and crowded with very heavy auto traffic. I did not care for any of the Outer Banks beyond Nags Head and will probably never return to those spots now that I've seen the historical locations we wanted to see.

The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. This was our favorite of the four lighthouses. They were in the midst of repainting it. You can see the painting scaffold just above the red brick. They were about halfway done with the job while we were there. This is on the southern end of the Outer Banks and this part of the islands are far less commercially developed and most of the acreage seems to be locked up as National Park land or Wildlife Refuge, thus protecting it from the kind of hideous exploitation that we saw in the north.

The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse still serves as an active facility. We waited below one evening until the light came on to see it in action.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig!

Well, we're home. The drive back was a very long, so we're bushed.

We enjoyed the Outer Banks. Why did I wait so long to experience it? Well..."the mountains" is the answer to that one.

Briefly, I enjoyed the southern part of the Outer Banks far more than I did the northern half. When you get to Nags Head the development is just too severe. Too many houses, too much traffic, too many people.

I'll post details in the coming days.

Queuing for the ferry ride to Ocracoke Island.

Looking down on the truck and Casita from the viewing platform on the ferry deck. Cost to ride the ferry for our rig was only $30.

Carole enjoying the view and the nice breeze on the upper deck.

The Ocracoke Lighthouse on Ocracoke Island. The village there is not RV-friendly, so we basically had to dash through and head to the other end of the island to catch the next ferry to Hatteras Island where our camping reservations were. Maybe we'll go back to Ocracoke some day without an RV to try to park.

Ready to Leave!

We took care of a ton of last-minute stuff today. The last thing we had to do this afternoon was pick up my new kayak. Not as nice as Carole's, but it will do the job.

I may not post much in the way of blogging while I'm on vacation. It will depend on whether or not I can find access to WiFi while we're in the wilds of eastern North Carolina.

Our truck, loaded with kayaks and camping supplies.

And my new kayak. Perception. 11 foot model. (Yeah...that's our recycle stuff by the walk. We recycle like mad.)

Why We Have a Travel Trailer

We would probably have bought a travel trailer anyway, but the main reason we got a hard-sided trailer was because of the last tent-camping trip we took. Carole and I went to the Standing Indian Campground in the summer of 2005. We got the best campsite in the entire campground (something like 180+ sites, so you know it was a good one when I say it's the best). We really had a nice tent-camping set-up in those days. We had it down to a science.

So, we were having a great time camping and hiking and canoeing. And then, second night we were there, a huge black bear invaded our campsite and proceeded to ransack the joint. Yes, we know the rules for camping in bear country and followed them all. But this bear had learned that people store food in containers and other places and went methodically about knocking over anything that looked like it might have food in it and tearing it open.

You would know this happened at midnight. I came out of the tent and reacted the way you're supposed to--I yelled at the bear and he did initially run away. But as we were cleaning up the campsite he barged right back in. I figured if he was such a big and aggressive bear, the best thing to do was back off. So we climbed into the truck. I started the engine and revved it and that finally scared him away, for good.

He did come back, but messed with the folk in the site adjacent to ours, chasing them into their station wagon. The next morning the campground host told us that the bear had pretty much terrorized everyone from one end of the campground to the other. Fortunately, no one (not even the bear) was injured.

But that's why we went out and bought a trailer.

Taken in 2005 with my old (and first) digital camera. Campsite #13 in Standing Indian Campground. And the last time we tent-camped as a family. (I still tent camp when I go backpacking, of course.)

Another shot of the site. That's our old Nissan Frontier. The only motor vehicle for which I ever developed any affection.

This kind of scenery is just a short drive or hike from Standing Indian Campground.

This is one of a number a great waterfalls close to the campground.

The day we bought the Casita from her previous owners in Georgia.

And the day we brought her home to Charlotte.

Scrubbin' the Casita!

We spent Sunday working to get the Casita ready for our next trip. I washed it from top to bottom and I have to admit the trailer was very dirty. I hadn't been able to wash it since our last trip in the Fall when we had the blowout.

Carole worked on stocking the trailer and got most of that done. We'll straighten up the inside and get everything stored where it's supposed to go on Thursday before we pull out and head for the coast.

All the stuff to scrub the fiberglass body.

Front to back, top to bottom. I climbed on top to scour the roof.

Things to be stored away.

Getting the kitchen stuff ready.

Dick Briefer's FRANKENSTEIN!

Occasionally, I'll buy a Golden Age comic for my collection. One of the titles I had been interested in for a long time was FRANKENSTEIN by writer/artist/creator Dick Briefer. He originally used the monster as a foil for his horror series as a backup in Prize Comics. This ran for some time. Later, after WWII, he reintroduced the "monster" as a good guy living in a middle class neighborhood, rather something like the later Herman Munster. For a few years he ran this series as a popular humor comic, introducing other monsters as comical and friendly characters.

Then, once more, he altered the title to be a horror comic. Gone was the comical face of the funny book, replaced by the more violent and monstrous Frankenstein of his original series. And thus the book continued until the rabid anti-comics crusades of the 1950s killed off all that was creative and fun in American comics, dooming things like Dick Briefer's FRANKENSTEIN to the dustbin of comics history.

The story in this issue is long on exposition and shorter on action. There are scenes of violence, and when they do occur they are intense. The monster is just that: a violent creature intent only on feeding and surviving. The humans are the heroes, dogging the monster to destroy it. Now that I have this issue of FRANKENSTEIN, I'll likely buy more of them.

Brifer's covers were ingenious and, in this case, really creepy.

Typical printing quality of the Golden Age. Off-center coloring. The heroes use Molotov cocktails to protect themselves from Frankenstein. (In this title, the monster's name is Frankenstein--the title does not refer to his creator).

The monster goes on a rampage, smashing a cemetery and wrecking a mausoleum.

And it is a horror comic book, after all. In the 1950s, comics did their horror right. The burned and further disfigured Frankenstein rises from the ashes of his supposed destruction, ready to do battle again next issue.

Train Wreck: FANTASTIC FOUR #108

I always forget that there was one more Jack Kirby issue of FANTASTIC FOUR after #102. I need to research the situation, but it was apparently something in the inventory that had been at least partially delivered by Kirby before he made the move to DC Comics. Marvel finally published it in a mangled format some six months after he was gone.

The story "The Monstrous Mystery of The Nega Man" is awful stuff. Reading it, you have almost no idea at all what Kirby was trying to do or say, because the yarn was mangled beyond all hope of any logic by Stan Lee. The introductory pages by Kirby seem to be missing. I'm betting that they were present but that they were replaced with new pages by John Buscema and (according to the credits listing) John Romita. Changes, of course, made at Lee's demands.

What was delivered in this last Kirby issue is a total mess. Dialogue paired with images in such a way that there is no logic at all. Not even within the often inconsistent world of superhero kids' comics! The juggernaut of commercialism built by Jack Kirby was barreling ahead and could not be stopped on the sales front--not even by an evil and incompetent editor and a host of misguided comic artists working in the wake of a talent they could never hope to match.

My copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #108. Added for the simple reason that I want to have all of Kirby's work on his creation. Cover apparently by John Buscema.

An opening page by John Buscema that had to be added due to changes in the plot and direction of the title since Kirby's absence. And creating a story from Kirby's work that makes no sense whatsoever.

"Last-minute revisions, deletions, and addenda..." Right.

Then, after the title page setup, we see Kirby art with dialogue that is completely inept. The caption at the bottom of the page even warns that none of this makes any sense. That's because Kirby's script was being shredded through sheer incompetence and outright malice.

The finished Kirby pages are classic stuff. Action as only Kirby could perform it. But dialogue that makes almost no sense and situations that are incompetently rendered by the editor.

Interspersed among the Kirby pages are completely new art and layouts by Buscema.

Some of the pages look to be cobbled together from layouts by Kirby, followed by interpretations of what appear to be guesswork by Buscema and company as to what Kirby intended. Missing the mark, of course, and leaving the reader with a total and complete mess.

Five More...

Only five more working days to vacation launch. Got the Good Sam Club membership renewed. Spent the day getting a new tire for the trailer and renewing the tag for the trailer. All that's left now is to wash and stock the Casita, plus pick up my new kayak because Carole and I plan to do a bit of blackwater kayaking in the Croatan National Forest. Hoping to see some black bears and red wolves. I've heard some stories of how large the black bear population in the Alligator Wildlife Refuge has become.

One of our campsites in Florida.

Inside our tiny travel trailer.