Bodie Island Light Station

Our plan for today, after running this morning, was to climb yet another lighthouse, the Bodie Island, 45 minutes away, halfway to Hatteras, built in 1872.  Martha had read that it was going to open to the public today, and we have never climbed it before.  We drove all the way down through Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head, onto the narrow two-lane road to Hatteras where the ferry departs for Ocracoke.

They were still working on the  Bonner Bridge replacement project, and I tried without success to take a photo of the fifteen or twenty cranes at work, the bridge hanging half-constructed over Oregon Inlet.  It was a beautiful day for a drive, and we arrived at Bodie Island about 2:00 p.m.  "Bodie" is pronounced "Body" (like the human body), and was named after a family which settled here in the mid-1600s.  But alas, we found that the lighthouse climb had been sold out, and these two bodies, eager to climb, could only stand and gaze and take photos.

We were told by a nice Park Ranger that only eight people could climb at one time, and they had to be judiciously spaced between the landings.  Unlike Currituck and Hatteras, which can be thronged with climbers, the spiral stairs are free-standing and not attached to the walls (only being designed for a single light-keeper originally, I suppose) which severely restricted the number of people who could climb it in any one day.  We were told to come back at 9:00 a.m. on some indefinite morning.

So we traveled on, farther south, to Rodanthe and the site of the Richard Gere/Diane Lane tear-jerker movie.  The house in the movie had been about to fall into the ocean before it was rescued by an astute investor who bought it, had it moved to higher ground, and now leases it for huge sums of money to romantic young couples (who we hope will not meet the same sad end as Richard Gere).

But our goal was instead the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station, which we visit every year, and which sells a strong, hearty tea called "Lifeboat Tea," that we eagerly stock up on every year and drink nearly every afternoon all year long.

The roof shingles were being replaced, the docent told us, with cedar shakes from British Columbia, in order to be authentic but at a huge cost.  We bought three boxes of tea.