Outer Banks

This past weekend we spent riding the outer banks. We were worried about the weahter in the days leading up to our arrival due to "Tropical Storm Andrea" but that Andrea fizzled somewhere south near Florida before it ever hit land. However, we did have couple days of on and off rain. We didn't have it too bad, as it seemed we were always able to skirt the storm. The clouds were amazing.







As we headed toward Cedar Island to get the ferry out to the Outer Banks, we passed beautiful coastal wetlands.





We took the Ferry to Ocracoke Island, which is the furthest south.



We decided to stay on Ocracoke for the night and got a campsite on the beach. We drank some beer and went swimming. Click here to watch Andrea Vs. the Atlantic.



We rode up to Nag's Head on Saturday and got to the Virigia border by Sunday evening. On the whole, I thought the Outer Banks were nice, but not as amazing as I had hoped. We recieved a lot of build up about how amazing the Outer Banks are from people all across the country. Whenever high expectations are involved, it's always easy to fall short. While it was beautiful hanging out on the beach, cycling the islands is actually sort of boring. You can't see the ocean because of the high berms which protect the road, so its mostly riding along between sand dunes and grass, which is nice, but not after 60 miles of it.

My complaint of the beach, beside it being totally littered with styrofoam debris from some shipping accident, is people are allowed to drive on the beach. Its hard to commune with nature, when you have SUVs and Trucks whizzing by you. Despite these criticisms, it really is quite pretty and we did have a good time. Here are some pics only documenting the good stuff.



a cute sand crab.



the only small stretch of road where you could see the ocean.



a great shot of my shoulder



Here, I stood up off the saddle, and raised my arm as high in the air as I could to see if I could get a shot of the ocean. I won!



This is the bridge connecting Hateras Island with Nags Head. You can see the weather is looking ify. That night we got railed with another 6 hour long coastal thunder storm. I heard a thunder crack which literally went on for 2 minutes straight. It was crazy. Again, all our stuff was wet or moist. Luckily we were headed into Richmond the next day to stay with our good friend Marcus, where we were able to dry everything out again.