August 25, 2008 by steve.

To be honest, Mr. CurbCursher was not really looking forward to going camping. It had only been two weeks since we’d finished the week long trip to the Outer Banks, and I didn’t really relish going to one of our local county parks to spend the weekend. Of Course the only Orange County Park that we’ve camped in before is Moss Park back in October of 2007 (and a few time before in the 5th wheel.). So I wasn’t really looking forward to our trip 30 miles up the road to Apopka and Kelly Park.

Well, I was wrong. I think it was one of the most enjoyable camping trips we’ve been on in a while. Kelly Park is built around Rock Springs and has a very nice tubing run. Unlike most springs, the swimming area is a good ways downstream of the actual spring. The spring head provides the launching point for a tube run that allows you to meander for about 10 - 20 minutes to the swimming area, and then after your float through the swimming area, there’s another 10 minutes or so until you get to the park boundary and have to get out of the water. The park has a boardwalk that runs from the park boundary back to the swimming area, and another one that runs from the swimming area to the spring head, so you just take your tube and do it all over again. The run is shallow enough that if you wish, you can walk the entire length. We made a couple of runs on Friday after we got there, then spent most of the day Saturday floating down the river, and even went back on Sunday morning and walked down the run another couple of time. All in all a very relaxing and enjoyable way to spend the weekend.

The camp sites are average. They are long enough for most motorhomes, but are not all completely level. The water and electric on some sites are located on opposite sides of the site (on ours the electric was on the driver’s side at the front, and the water on the passenger’s side at the rear.), so make sure you have an extra hose and extension cord. There is a dump station that is located about mid-ways through the camping loop, so if you are in a site with a number above about 13 or 14, you have to drive back around the campground loop in order to get to the dump site. The campground road and the sites are not paved, just well packed dirt. Even with a standard afternoon thunderstorm things didn’t get too muddy.

Orange County does not have a consistent policy for making reservations at the county parks that you can camp at. At Moss Park mentioned earlier, you have to go make your reservation in person. Thankfully Kelly Park seems to operate in the late 20th Century, and allows you to make a reservation via the telephone 45 days out. We’ll probably try and find some time to head back up to Kelly Park again during the summer months. Pictures from our trip are here.

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August 15, 2008 by steve.

Well Lady CurbCursher got to see the lighthouses, I really wanted to see Kitty Hawk and see where the Wright Brothers first accomplished powered flight. We stopped in at the Wright Brothers National Memorial while traveling between Currituck and Bodie Island lighthouses. In some ways there is not a lot to see here, it is mostly a place that you can just be, and imagine history being made.

There is Kill Devil Hill, with the memorial placed atop it. The place where the brothers spent a couple of years perfecting gliders and figuring out how to control flight. At the base of the hill is a large stone that marks where each of the four flights in December 1903 started. And starting 120 feet from that stone are markers showing just how far each of those flights lasted (the longest was 852 feet). There is a visitors center with a small museum, and a centennial pavilion that host more exhibits. In the exhibits you get a feel for just how incredible the Wright Brothers feat was. They were bicycle mechanics, they had no training in engineering or aerodynamics. There were large scientific institutions like the Smithsonian that were spending large amounts of money with “experts” to make the first manned flight happen. These two guys basically had a will to fly, and the ingenuity and desire to make it work. And they did. All in all its a great American story about how two brothers made their dream come true because they would not accept that they could not do it.

Pictures of our visit to the Wright Memorial are here.

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August 15, 2008 by steve.

Well, trying to catch up on the stuff we did while on the Outer Banks even though we’ve been home for a month, and gone camping again since then. Lady CurbCrusher used to be a huge lighthouse fan. Over the past few years the fad has waned in the CurbCrusher household, but we still visit lighthouses when the opportunity presents itself. The trip to the Outer Banks gave us the chance to visit four lighthouse, two of which you can climb.

We started our tour by driving as far north as you can on paved roads on the Outer Banks and visited Currituck lighthouse. The trip from Waves was not too bad, the worst part is driving through Duck. In Duck there are no sidewalks and you are separated from the pedestrians, strollers and bikes by a white line painted in the road. So traveling through Duck is done somewhere around the speed of a snail. We stopped at the Currituck visitor center where we were greeted by a way too enthusiastic man that wanted to make sure we knew everything about Currituck that could be visited. We really only wanted to know two things: where is the lighthouse, and can you see the wild horses without driving down the beach. He answered the first question, then said there was a board walk where you could “sometimes” see the horses (We went to the boardwalk, we walked the whole boardwalks, we didn’t see horses, nor do we really believe that anyone has ever seen horses from the boardwalk.) He then proceeded to start talking about ever house, museum and place to visit in Currituck. We finally excused ourselves and left the visitors center.

The lighthouse is open for climbing, yes there was a fee. We went on a Monday and were there around 9:30 and did not wait in line. One of the people there told us that the busiest days were Wednesday and Thursday, when the wait could be 45 minutes to an hour. If I recall correctly, there were 256 stairs to the top, and then the views was fantastic. The pictures of our visit are here.

Following our visit in Currituck, we headed down the coast to Bodie Island light. This lighthouse is located on the Cape Hatteras National Shore, which runs along the Outer Banks for a good ways. You can not climb this lighthouse, but you can walk all the way around it, and the old keepers quarters are house a gift shop. Since there is no climbing, there is no fee, and our visit was fairly short. Pictures of our visit are here.

Well two down and two to go at this point. We took the rest of the day off, and then headed back on the lighthouse trail the next morning. South this time, down past Cape Hatteras Lighthouse to the ferry that takes you to Ocracoke Island. After about 45 minutes “at sea” you arrive at Ocracoke island.

The Ocracoke Island light is another one you just get to look at. It is down a little road to the left as you travel from the ferry landing to the town of Ocracoke. You walk down a path, take a couple of pictures and then head back. We didn’t hang around Ocracoke for very long, we visited the Pirate House since Little CurbCrusher had an interest, had some lunch and headed back towards the ferry.

The big grandaddy of all lighthouse, Cape Hatteras. This lighthouse is in the National Seashore also, but climbing is allowed. It was a bit of an ordeal to climb the lighthouse, but that was mostly the result of the National Park Service having no idea how to deal with a tornado warning.

We arrived at the lighthouse around 2PM and purchased tickets for the climb at 2:30. We wandered over to the museum/keepers house. As we were wandering around the museum, we heard over the NPS radio at the information desk that a waterspout had been sighted. This was followed by the announcement over the radio that a tornado warning was being issued. In turn, was followed was bunch of people asking what that meant. After about five minutes someone decided that they needed to close the lighthouse to climbers, and everyone was encouraged to seek shelter. By this time its about 2:15, and we’ve figured out that we’re probably not going to get a 2:30 climb in. Our big question was “Will the tickets be honored in the order they were issued, or do we need to go to the ticket booth and get a refund/swap in the tickets.” The first two rangers we asked could not answer the question. The third one was more helpful, his response: “No one knows what is going on. We are running around like chickens with our heads cut off because of the weather. But I will get you an answer if you’ll wait right here.” And true to his word, he returned in about three minutes with the answer that when the lighthouse re-opened, they would be working on tickets that were valid for the time it re-opened, not any prior tickets.

The weather did not look too bad. We had driven through some rain on our way from the south, but it was moving to the south. So I just traded in the tickets for a 3:00 climb. About 2:45, they opened the lighthouse back up, and we were able to climb to the top, take some pictures and enjoy the view. Afterward we drove over to the site where the lighthouse had been moved from a few years back, and finally ended our second day of lighthouse visiting.

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