Day Thirty-nine
Buxton, NC, to Murrell's Inlet, SC
July 17th, 2000


High Point of the Day....
Low Point of the Day......
Brian- Hush Puppies, Fried Conch, and Boiled Shrimp at Russell's Raw Bar in Murrell's Inlet
Theresa- The Chesapeake Bay Bridge
Sweating out of pores we didn't know we had
Miles Traveled Today
Total Miles Traveled
Miles Theresa Drove
Weather
 255
9322
101
(1822 total)
sunny, rainy, muggy, and thunderstorms, in the mid-80's
Price of Gas 
(average per gallon)
Wildlife
Night's Lodging
Where this Page was Uploaded
 $1.57
 lots of wild rabbits, pelicans, lots of other birds we can not identify....
 Huntington Beach State Park
Murrell's Inlet, SC 
 Alligator Point Campground
Alligator Point, FL

Daily Narrative    Today was a day of multiple ferry rides, real humidity, and some awfully pretty coastline.  We began bright and early, in order to catch the 7:30 ferry from Hatteras to Ocracoke Island.  After the free forty-five minute ferry ride, driving the fourteen mile length of Ocracoke gets you to the ferry to the mainland.  Ocracoke is a beautiful spot and, because of the ferries involved in getting there, is fairly undeveloped.  We caught the 10:30 ferry to Cedar Island, which is connected to the mainland by a bridge, and after a two and a half hour boat ride (and some interesting conversation with our new local buddy "Zan") we were back on a less boat intensive road system.  We made a pit stop in Beaufort (Boo-furd) for a great lunch and headed on down Highway 17, which moves inland around Jacksonville, through Wilmington, and eventually returns to the coast on the other side of the South Carolina border.  Still trying to figure out where to stay for the evening, we made the mistake of driving in to the insanely congested Myrtle Beach area and, as soon as we could extract ourselves, headed on down to the much more relaxed community of Murrell's Inlet for the Huntington Beach State Park campground.  This very nice campground had exactly what we had been after in this humidity, a beach.  We played (yes Mike, full submersion) in the Atlantic for over an hour, went into Murrell's Inlet for some excellent local seafood, and chalked up another successful day.


Daily Pictures

Morning in the Cape Woods Campground
Next to what our campground map euphemistically called a "pond".  The green layer on top was plant life
Most of the buildings in the area are built on stilts (this one had them enclosed).  We figure this is to ease picking them back up when a hurricane knocks them down
And, of course, we found a UFO
Our first ferry ride of the day was from Cape Hatterras to Ocracoke Island
About a forty five minute ride
We then drove from one end of Ocracoke to the other to catch our next ferry
This trip was to be two and a half hours to Cedar Island, more or less the mainland
It was a very pretty day in the Ocracoke harbor...
...and a very pleasant ferry ride in and out of the bus, the view here is from the back seat
This bird looked much larger and more menacing in person
Lower North Carolina coastal areas were predominantly swampy and grassy
Theresa's legs
If this was true they would turn the heat down a bit
Our evening's lodging, Huntington Beach State Park, just south of Myrtle Beach and Murrell's Inlet...
...where we played amateurishly in the ocean.  Here Brian is playing a game he invented called "driftwood" 



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