Saturday night the temperature dipped into the lower 30's and the forecast for the day was only in the 50's. Even with no wind, I didn't want to hang around Roanoke Island anymore so I packed up and headed out.
Cedar Island juts out of the mainland into Pamlico Sound, 40 miles north of Beaufort, NC. I could have gone back down Hatteras Island, taken a free 30 minutes ferry ride to Ocracoke Island, driven down it for 20-30 miles and then paid $20 for a 2 1/2 hour ferry ride to Cedar Island. Instead, I chose to drive 150 miles or so, mainly because I didn't want to spend 2 1/2 hours staring at the water and partly because of the $20.
Beaufort is a town I've been interested in for some time. It has a very good reputation amongst people cruising in their sailboats and also has a Maritime Museum. It had taken longer than expected to get that far so I just passed on through. I'll check it out on the way back.
I said Cedar Island is 40 miles north of Beaufort. It is. But there isn't much of anything in between except the Cedar Island National Wildlife Refuge. There are no gas stations (I noticed a couple on the way back), no super markets, no mini-marts, no nothin'. Suprisingly, there are a large number of houses along the way. Where they work and shop, beats me.
There is a mini-mart at the Cedar Island to Ocracoke Island (where there's more wild horses) ferry, at least for now, owned by a retired couple from New Jersey. There's also a motel and gift shop and a visitor's center. And my campgrounds and a place renting horses for a ride along a half mile beach.
My campground, however, has no showers open, no water and no toilets open. Everything's closed up. I'm camped right on a pretty little inlet near the ferry station though.
As soon as I pulled up a big Irish Setter looking dog attached itself to me. I drove around looking at the ferry, a boat ramp, etc. and he trotted along behind me. I went to register at the motel and he was lying beside the truck when I came out. I went to the mini-mart and he followed and when I went back to the campground there he was. Now I like dogs, in fact if I wasn't kayaking, I'd probably have one. But he looked as if I offered the slightest bit of encouragement, he'd follow me to hell and back. So I chased him off.
It looks as if most of the camp picnic tables and fire rings have been ripped off. I had to drag a table down to my site. They've built little pavilions over the picnic tables which is a nice touch. Except they're only about 5 feet tall. How many times can a grown man bang his head on the same thing? Tim Allen doesn't count. It's times like these I wish I was married to a short woman or a hard headed one.
And there are mosquitoes here. They're not swarming like we've all seen or heard about but they're here. I was going to run and hide from them in the tent but decided if I'm going to the Everglades, I'd better learn to deal with them. So I dug out a bandanna and put it under my hat hanging down my neck. Of course now I look like Lawrence of Arabia.
I took a walk on the beach and found a dead sea(?) turtle about a foot long. I don't know if it was a young logger turtle or not. It had 4 scallop shell shaped ridges on it's back, like vertebrae (probably a diamond back). And of course there was all the wild tires, bottles, etc. growing along the shore.
And of course out here in the middle of nowhere next to a wildlife refuge, we have jet fighters flying overhead, coming from somewhere and going somewhere too. If found out later Camp Lejeune is nearby.
12-13-99:
I awoke this morning to the buzz of mosquitoes in my ear. 3-4 got in last night and snacked on various tender parts. Squishing them left new blood stains on the inside of the tent. 20-30 of their friends and neighbors were knocking on the mesh tent door trying to get in for the funeral. I took sadistic joy in flicking them off for a while. They weren't going away though. They were just waiting for me to step outside where it would be their turn.
The skies were overcast with some dark storm clouds too. A wind seemed to be building up but it was pretty warm for early in the morning, probably in the 50's.
I haven't been walking enough recently, a habit I developed in the mountains when I was hiking almost every day. The southern beach is fenced off, I assume by the horse people so I turned north again. The tide goes way out here, leaving very wide sand flats behind. Anyone paddling this area would need to paddle well offshore to find water.
Above the beach are sand dunes with gnarly live oaks bent, and leaning inland, away from the prevailing southwest wind. The beach sand was compressed pretty tightly offering good footing and I was able to maintain a brisk pace most of the way.
I began paying more attention to my surrounding and started noticing raccoon tracks and what I took to be fox tracks. Other tracks looked like some kind of cat with long sharp claws but it was probably just a stupid toy poodle in need of a manicure. I did finally see one set of deer tracks.
And I'm still banging my head on that damn pavilion.
After breakfast I launched the sea kayak right from the camp site into a 10-15 knot wind. An inlet leads the way out into Cedar Island Bay through 20-30 yards of marsh grass on the main island and marsh grass making up many smaller islands.
I just got up to check the map and knocked myself down and almost out on that freakin' pavilion. Fortunately I'm wearing a hat and that cushions the blow a lot.
Anyway, Cedar Island Bay opens up onto Core Sound in one direction and Pamlico Sound on the other. As soon as I launched, a pelican flew over head and less than a minute later a blue heron took flight.
Paddling close to the grasses, I could see clusters of mussels clinging to the clumps. These had ridges on their shells similar to those I'd seen in mud banks in New England. I don't know if they're edible or not. They're not like the blue mussels you buy in a store which are probably farm raised.
I have a brochure indicating clams, oysters, scallops, crabs, conch and shrimp can be taken for personal use without a license. Mussels aren't mentioned at all so either they aren't edible or they're so common they aren't worth mentioning. I know in Maine, mussels are considered a nuisance, particularly by the lobstermen but I love them.
The little inlet open into wider waters as the grass islands moved farther off shore. The wind started out around a steady 10 knots from due south and gusting to 15 but soon rose to about 15 knots gusting to 20 knots. I just maintained a slow steady paddling stroke, concentrating on keeping the left arm as straight as possible to keep as much tension off of it as possible.
I started seeing more and more pelicans. Unlike those I saw off Cape Hatteras, all bunched together, apparently feeding, these were either alone or in pairs. Several were perched(?) on top of pilings. On the way back I got a picture of one of them. As I head farther south, I'm sure pelicans will become more common and turn out to be as pesky and annoying as sea gulls. These are my first ones, though, and your first is always special.
I paddled against the wind for an hour and then let it push me back in, just using sweep strokes to keep kayak pointed in the right direction. As I neared the grass islands, I decided to go through them rather than around them. I was protected from the wind a little but it was still pretty forceful.
It seemed I had been moving down the channel for 20 minutes or so when the banks started getting closer together and it finally dead ended. I don't know anything about the tides in the area but knew they had been ebbing for close to 2 hours. The last thing in the world I wanted was to run out of water in some little back channel. A good, strong 10 minute paddle against the wind got me out of the channel and into open water again.
After lunch the rains started and have been going intermittently for the past hour. The wind kept most of the mosquitoes away but it died when the rains started. I finally gave up and ran for the tent to finish this report when I could see 20-30 of them in front of my face.
12-13-99:
It rained pretty hard off and on all night. Then around 4:40am, the monsoons came. A 15 knot wind made sure the rain got into every single place it might have missed earlier. The tent held up pretty well but I noticed the floor was soaking wet. I started thinking about my system for keeping the tent dry, trying to find the flaws.
I have a 10X14 tarp as a ground cloth, with the edges rolled up under the floor of the tent. The outer edges of the tent are supposed to hang down over the rolled up tarp. These edges do absorb water and it's supposed to run down and accumulate right at the edge. One minor oversight on my part was to sop up the water as it accumulates. I always air my sleeping bag out during the day and had it spread out drying when the rains first started. One corner of the bag was directly in the little catch basin and got soaking wet. Since it's goose down, I took it and draped it over the steering wheel in the truck overnight.
And since I wasn't sopping up the water as it accumulated, every time there was a gust of wind it would lift and tighten the edges of the tent, allowing the accumulated water to run down over the rest of the floor. Oh well, I'm learning.
There was a break in the downpour around 7:30am. By that time I had had enough of the rain, the mosquitoes, the island and everything else. I broke the tent down as fast as I could and loaded it soaking wet into the truck. I use the old wing tarp as a cover over the gear in the truck bed and hoped it would keep everything else from getting soaked as well.