Day 59 - How To Save A Life

Author - Grant
From – Chapel Hill (NC)
To – Nags Head (NC)
Via – Edenton (NC)
Miles Driven – 260 (ish)

Today’s Photos – http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157612077160904/

Today was a bit crappy. It rained all day (so much for North Carolina’s incredible weather). We drove a LOT (a cumulative six hours in the car). We couldn’t be bothered fishing out our various in-car entertainment options from the Jenga / Tetris arrangement of bags in the back of Bridget. The majority of the journey was on dull highway roads leading to such fascinating conversations as “Why do some Subway signposts have the word Subway three times whilst some only have it twice?” When we weren't on highways, we were in the middle of snake ridden luminous green swamps. We didn’t really have a plan of attack so the light at the end of the tunnel kept moving. We had a naff lunch en route after getting a negative amount of information from a talking bruise at the Edenton visitor centre. And to top it all off, we were both in slightly funny moods though tiredness. This list of ingredients was never going to culminate in a tasty soup. However, all’s well that ends well as we set up camp in Nag’s Head for the night – surely the town that invented pub names would be good to us?

With just an hour of daylight left we took a wander on the beautiful beach which stretches as far as the eye can see on both sides of the sound. The beach is used by a strange mix of dog walkers, strolling lovers and kids doing donuts in their 4x4s. But the highlight of the walk was discovering what we thought was a recently beached baby shark that was still wiggling. I would like to paint a heroic picture for you of me aiding the poor creature back to it’s family in the depths of the sea but the reality is that I was practically screaming like a 4 year old when I finally managed to build up the courage to grab the foot long monster by the tail and lob it back in the sea. My actions probably gave it a headache but it did eventually swim away so I was feeling good about my shark rescue for at least 10 seconds before a local fisherman pointed out that it was a dogfish, not a shark. When I tell my grandkids, it will be a shark and it will be a whole heap bigger than 12 inches. Would I describe myself as a hero? Yes. Yes I would.

Not much more to report as we’re having a quiet night to get a head start tomorrow morning. We did, however, have dinner in Mulligans which is a local fish joint. After our crappy day we thought we deserved lots of food as a reward so in addition to the ever-present Chicken Wings (I am on 20 a day since stopping smoking) we had some particularly fine crab cakes, some not-so-great blackened tuna and a platter of broiled oysters, clams, shrimp and crab-legs. Apart from the tuna, it was all pretty good but they were a bit liberal with the Old Bay seasoning which I will probably be tasting on my fingers for many days to come. One quirky touch in this restaurant was that, in addition to the usual condiments, each table came adorned with a pair of reading glasses which probably says a lot about the average age of the clientele of Nags Head. The place should be twinned with Eastbourne.

From here’s it’s due south to Florida (and the warmth) via South Carolina and Georgia so we can swap our scarves and hats for flip-flops and speedos.