June 8, Sunday – Lost Colony and Flight Born

Smoke totally blocked out the morning sun. Breathing was marked. I could handle just one more day of this if I could go from one air conditioning atmosphere to another. My goal was to not return to the hot, A/C less Snoo-Oosh after 3:30 with the hopes that the on-shore breeze would push the smoke inland. To accomplish this I headed in the Jetta with its lifesaving A/C unit to Fort Raleigh on Roanoke Island. Amazing history about the first English settlement. How the local Indians befriended the new comers who turned against them by beheading their leader. How their leader went back to England to get more supplies because the settlers were made up of trades people and not farm people. England wanted minerals so sent people who knew how to deal with copper, gold, silver but not food production so the villagers relied on the native population for food supplies. They soon got tired of getting glass beads for food. Attacks followed.
When their leader return in two years, he found none of the 115 people that he left there.
From the lost I move to aloft – Kitty Hawk and the history of the first flight performed by the famous Wright Brothers. The freedom to soar. What surprised me was the amount of people who were visiting the place. There was a sense of awe at how the brothers worked out details getting their craft to fly farther and farther with each trial. Another surprise was that Orville Wright died when I was eight years old. Oh, my old smoky bones.

June 7, Saturday – Visibility and Heights

It was so bloody hot I slept spread eagle and naked with every window in the rig wide open because there were no electrical hook-ups in the National Park Campground on Bodie Island. I fell asleep on my back with a portable battery-driven fan on my chest. I had dreams of someone having a smoky campfire next to me. In the morning the whole setting had changed. A scarlet sun rose above the line of dunes and smoke hung like Canadian west coast fog. This was big time. I had to find clean air and cooler temperatures so with my Jetta A/C giving me life, I headed south toward the famous Hatteras Lighthouse. This was amazing; the smoke was so dense from the mainland fire you could only see a half a mile ahead. People had their headlights on. About 45 minutes down the island chain the smoke finally thinned. The rangers said that there was a lightning struck in the wildlife refuge last weekend that started the wildfire and it had gone into the peat bogs. It will probably burn for months and nothing short of a continuous heavy downpour would put it out. Its size was now 50 square miles and with the off-shore breezed and a temperature inversion the Outer Banks were getting it all.
The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is the tallest brick lighthouse in the world at 210 feet with 269 steps. For ten decades the lighthouse sat on the beach and every storm threaten it. After years of planning, the world’s best house movers working with civil engineers picked the entire structure up and moved it back from the coast a distance of 1,600 feet over a period of eleven days. It was billed as “The Move of the Century”. Tens of thousands of people came to watch. Many were emotionally attached to its light and its spiral color pattern. As one of the workers said, “This lighthouse is America’s Lighthouse”.

June 6, Friday - Smoke

As I drive north the population density increases. A line almost exist at Georgetown, South Carolina. From that point north the rural flavor of the coast disappears and the summer places of the rich clog the coastal highway. From "Beaufort-by-the-Sea” as the promoters want the masses to know their quaint, seaside town, one has to travel inland to go around the imposing Pamlico Sound to reach the next set of islands that make up the Hatteras National Seashore. Going off the beaten path always (Again I try not to dwell on this) a concern is for the price of petrol. With town names like New Bern, Washington and Griswell I brace myself. I go for the Hess at $3.96 and suck down $120 worth of liquid gold. A few miles down the road at a laid back country intersection I glance at the $3.90 price and keep rolling.. what’s $1.83 difference when we’re dealing with $120.
Going into the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center I take refuge from the heat by mooching off of their A/C plus enjoy their information and displays. But down the highway in the middle of the refuge, I shake my head in total confusion as I witness a highway truck spraying roadside herbicide on the shoulder and into a water tree-lined waterway paralleling the route.
Farther up the road I see a portable highway sign ahead flashing “Dense Smoke Ahead, Proceed With Caution”. Something was burning and smoke hung in the air. When I cross the one and half long Alligator River Bridge, I couldn’t see the other side. When I hit the Outer Bank Island set, it was clear. I recalled the Florida fire I drove through on my north and wondered if I was going to see the same thing.

June 5, Thursday - La Conner??

In my rush to get out of South Carolina I took some back roads. As I cleared the top of a high bridge I knew I was in trouble. At the base of the bridge was a large brick gatehouse with a uniformed guard. I slowed to a stop in front of the military police. He asked where I was trying to get to – “Beaufort.” “Did you realize that this is a marine base?” “I got that impression when I cleared the top of the bridge.” “I’ll let you go through just stay on the main highway.” “Okay. Thanks.”
On the narrow road there were side roads with “Tank Crossing” stenciled on the main highway; and I got to see a convoy of “Tactical Vehicles.” I didn’t wave at the drivers.
The Outer Banks run the length of the state of North Carolina. The Cape Lookout National Seashore is accessed from the town of Beaufort (BOW-fort). Unlike Cumberland Island, a fleet of competing boat taxies serves the Core Banks and Shackleford Banks. Historic Beaufort is the homeport. The front street has houses built in the late 1700’s and the early 1800’s plus old commercial buildings and a long boardwalk. The most interesting feature on the waterfront was the wooden boat building shop with an observing balcony for the passersby’s. However it was strongly evident that there was no design review process because the storefronts were a bad mix of styles and materials but the scales were compatible. The major rejection for me was the blatant, gaudy commercialism. It is so easy for a historic town to go down that path (channel). Only good zoning and a constant vigilance against over zealous developers that only have an eye on the profit margin will save towns like La Conner. Beaufort, North Carolina has been lost.

Of Flags and Symbols

I’ve been on the roads of the Deep South for almost three months; mostly on the interstates but many on the backcountry lanes. Do I see Confederate flags on vehicles, on houses and flagpoles? I’ve seen perhaps four flags on displayed at homes and none on buildings. I’ve seen about as many Confederate flags on trucks/cars in Skagit County back home as I’ve seen here in the south. However the radio has been abuzz about the "Sons of the Confederate Soldiers" wanting to put up the largest flag ever made on a huge pole near the interstate next to Tampa, Florida. So it’s there.
South Carolina became the first state to allow a person to declare their religion on state plates. South Carolina has about 16 specialty license plates of which one says, “In God We Trust.” The new plate will say, “I Believe” with a Christian cross. Is this a violation of separation of church and state? Let the lawyers line up.
Churches are very where: small churches almost every mile on rural back roads, mega glass palaces next to the interstates. Charleston is known as “the Holy City” due to the many church steeples stabbing the heavens from the low city skyline. The south is certain the Bible Belt.

June 4, Wednesday – Forting Again

After a day of doing errands, I was seeking out the fort that guarded the entrance to one of the most important seaports on the east coast –Ft. Sumter.
As the heat increase over slavery Charleston, which was the port for most of the slave ships, focused on the forts guarding the harbor. Soon after being the first state to secede from the United States, fired on the fort starting the Civil War. I was surprised several times by the facts: the commander for the Union was the teacher at West Point of the commander of the Confederate States and both were good friends. With only 85 men to defend the fort the Union commander had to make a major decision 30 hours into the bombardment. Fire cannons or put out fires next to the fort’s ammunition magazine. Anderson decided to surrender giving the Confederates their first victory.
I implode with curiosity about what the Blacks are thinking when we, as tourists, hear the history from the rangers. As we stand side by side in the audience what are our thoughts?
Mine are of amazement that one culture believes that it can own another culture even though slavery is as old as the human race.

I know that I must find cooler weather - 93 degrees is not for this child so I pull out of South Carolina heading up the coast as fast as I can sail this ship. I see that the coast is now becoming more populated and wondering how this might impact my finding coastal state parks to hide out in. I must have power where I stay at these temperatures for my over worked A/C unit.

June 3, Tuesday – Sitting on the Porch

Early in the morning I swung the double set onto Martin Luther King, Jr Road on the sea island of St. Helena. Along the road under the cover of live oaks I came upon a campus d called Penn Center and turned in.
What I learned from the internet was that the Penn Center was started by Quakers in Philadelphia in 1862. Two teachers, one a Quaker, spent 40 years teaching the Gullah people how to read and write. Within two years a third teacher, who was black, joined them. The history of the school and center is rich with history along with its fifteen historic buildings on the 50 acres.
As I sat in the reading in the administrations, blacks came and went with a couple of white people mixed in. I felt like I was sitting in the admin building for the Swinomish Tribe, a minority; out of place but very comfortable in the setting. They gave me a map with descriptions of the buildings so I set out on a self guided tour ending up in the museum.
One out-of-the-way building gave me pause – the Gantt Cottage. A heavy emotional wave washed over me as I stood before it. It was here that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr stayed on his visits to Penn Center. It was here that he planned and met with whites – one of only two places in the south that blacks and whites could meet together in the 60’s. Slowly I moved to the screened in porch and sat in silence. The March on Washington had its seeds planted here.
I spent an hour in the museum looking at the video and reading the exhibits and displays. And this place lives on dedicated to preserving the islands’ culture of the Gullah people.