Settling In

We are settled in here at Camp Hatteras in Rodanthe, NC. Everyone we talked to said that the Outer Banks (the OBX as they say here) was one of the nicest places and so far as we have seen it really is. Long stretches of beaches are in pristine condition, much like they must have been before the OBX were inhabited. It still is rather an odd but beautiful place. In some sections you can see both Pamlico Sound on one side and the Atlantic on the other. Rodanthe is a mecca for kite surfers and the colorful arcs of the kites that drag the kite surfers through the water at amazing speeds look amazingly like multi-colored birds swooping and soaring through the air.

There is a price to be paid for the wild beauty and relative solitude of the place. The nearest "real" grocery store is in a place called Avon, 17 miles away. Wal Mart is a mere 45 miles away in Kitty Hawk. That doesn't sound too too far until you consider that the roads here are single lane and not as good as Galilee Church road.
However the food, particularly the seafood, is excellent. The assistant manager here bought a bushel of blue crabs and steamed them Monday night. Never having had fresh crab, we were a bit apprehensive about going. I can now say, without any reservation or hesitation, we are crab fools. If you ever go to a crab boil though, be sure to go by Home Depot and get a hazmat suit. Eating fresh crab is without a doubt the messiest event having anything to do with food on the damn planet. And, to eat enough to assuage a normal person's hunger will take anywhere between 6 hours and 4 days. Once you pick the suckers clean though, the crab meat is most excellent. A crab boil, at least here, is a social event, so the time passes pretty quickly. The local standard is to drink 3 beers for each crab eaten. Wait, that might be 1 beer for every three crabs. I forget, but I like the first one best.