A terrific light house. Unlike the other classic stations in the Outer Banks, this 158-foot light house retains its beautiful brick exterior with no whitewash and black paint. And it consists of about one million bricks! Nestled in the pretty Currituck Heritage Park, another attraction of this lighthouse is that you can ascend to the top. Admission is $7 per person (free if 7 years or younger). There is a spiral metal staircase with plenty of landings to allow the up-down traffic to negotiate beyond each other. There are some informative displays at several landings and it is nicely done. At the top you are afforded tremendous views. Of course you don’t want to look inland across the Banks to see the endless expanse of modern condos, but in all other directions you get to absorb the natural beauty. When you get back down you can check out the gift shop, in one of the preserved outbuildings at the foot of the beacon. Yes, we scored a tacky magnet! This truly is a delightful place where you can enjoy a magnificent lighthouse and much more!!!

Since our daughter was staying at the beach house and we had time to ourselves, we drove a few miles north to the Currituck Light Station today.  This deserves a separate review, so check it out below.  It was a great day, although it rained most of the time and after we returned from our lighthouse junket we basically shacked up in the beach house with the college gang (and heard many more stories around drunken adventures).

A fun day, though not much to report from a TravBuddy perspective.  My wife and daughter wanted a beach day, and Mother Nature served up a perfect sunny day for such an endeavor. The Corolla beach was very nice, but the water was a bit chillier than anticipated.  I spent most of my time sprawled out on the sand reading or with my camera – trying to capture a cool shot of the multitude of sand crabs darting in and out of their holes!

Watching the sand crabs was a delight, and after returning to our hotel room we repaired to the beach house (where Jeff and his college buddies were).  Here we met up with a lot of drinking and endless college stories (usually involving drinking).  I can’t begrudge it at all, but since I didn’t know anybody and was the designated driver to get us back home for the night, not a thrilling evening.

What better way to celebrate the beginning of summer than arriving at a beautiful beach?  That was the expectation, though reality was a little disappointing.  Our excitement built up as we drove across Roanoke Island to Nags Head, only to witness the endless succession of tacky beach shops which clutter every beach destination.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic was further sobering and my visions of a rustic retreat evaporated.  I almost dialed up an old friend who has been coming here for a week very year since the 1980’s to complain.  The tales my buddy (Doug) shared had painted this picture of a remote environment - utterly shattered now that we were there.  My mind had been seeded by Doug’s sharing of a conversation he had with a local years ago.  The environs apparently struck Doug as miles from nowhere and he inquired what folks did when there was a medical emergency.  The local (or ‘Banker’ as they are called) dryly responded “people die here”.  This conjured a hardscrabble picture in my brain, a place populated by rugged individualists, akin to my beloved Maine

After limping past four Medical Centers (each advertising ‘Emergencies Accepted’, no less!) in a suffocating mass of traffic after one mile on the Banks, that image was utterly demolished.  .Our running joke would become “yeah, people die here” – because they can’t get to a hospital for all the cars or that their hearts had been clogged by salt water taffy!

Slowly we plodded north towards Duck, where we had planned to rendezvous with Jeff and his family.  We met up at a trendy strip mall, where we enjoyed lunch and everybody went shopping for a bit (except for me – not shaping up as my ideal vacation).  We spent the balance of the day inching further northward towards Corolla (pronounced CUH-RAWL-AH….not like the Toyota) and checked in to our respective hotels / vacation houses.  No pictures today.