Cape Hatteras National Seashore

When I left you yesterday, Mike and I were just about to take a stroll along the beach. We walked to the boardwalk access. As we crossed the dune, I turned back to take a picture of our rig.

Walking on, we crossed over the dunes to the beach. We both love the ocean, and it doesn't matter which coast we're on.

Here's how we're going to die this afternoon. My advice: stay out of the water.

There is a sand dune between us and the ocean. Dunes, by their nature, are always on the move. This one has nearly buried its fence.

Looking the other direction, it's even worse.

There are people fishing, and there is a pier far off in the distance. There was a half moon in the sky. I tried unsuccessfully to catch it in one of my pictures.

This is a shell beach. Upon the advice of friends, I'm keeping my eyes peeled for sharks' teeth.

Honestly, there's so much variation in color and shape that it doesn't really matter if we find sharks' teeth. Everything is delightful. We don't have shells like this on the west coast.

How long do you suppose this remnant of a conch shell has been rolling around in the surf? We have eaten conch fritters in Belize. It took us a while to work up our nerve, and they turned out to be delicious.

This scallop was black. Never seen anything like it before.

This one was quite a bit smaller, but still perfect. We found lots of shells that were perfect.

There were two birds accompanying us on our walk. This is the Lesser Black-backed gull.

This is the Greater Black-backed gull. Recall that we saw these guys up in the Chesapeake Bay area. This guy is going into my sketchbook. My one word for him: "Plump."

These are their footprints.

There's something about these fences half buried in the sand that is interesting to my eye.

They're better when the shadows grow long...as they had when I took this picture of our shadow selves. They really wanted to get in the water on this day.

This morning we'll head north to Kitty Hawk. We want to see where Orville and Wilbur flew the first airplane, and we want to see some other things up there too. We'll stop in to see the Bodie Island Lighthouse, and I'd love to see Fort Raleigh if we have time. Fort Raleigh is the site of the first colony in the new world. It was founded sometime around 1580 (way ahead of the Pilgrims) and after a few years, it mysteriously disappeared. No one knows for sure what happened to the folks there, but they vanished without leaving behind any clues. There's also a quilt shop up there, but that will be last on our list of things to see.