The Eastern Seaboard Episodes: A Good Banker is Hard to Find

Welcome back to the The Eastern Seaboard Episodes, we are into the homestretch before returning to regular scheduled programming about a boy and his continuing uncanny knack for pissing people off.  Again I ask and beg of you, if the handy penmanship of Skipah’s Realm upsets your monthly biological 28-day process or causes you to blow up like Shamu, here is a quick tip….don’t read!  I would chalk this up to common sense, but some people are gluttons for punishment.  Quick Sloane update-due to Easter Weekend not being seen in the state of Indiana as a holiday for men in even number years, and with her Spring Break coming (again not favorable to men in years that are divisible by two), I’m assuming she is alive and well, since I haven’t seen her since the Eisenhower administration.  Maybe not quite that long, but it sure feels like it.

Our last day at the Outer Banks was a brief one, but we managed to make the most of it.  Bill & Veda were up to their old tricks as breakfast was outstanding, and Bill informed me that more crab meat is shipped to the Chesapeake Bay area from the Outer Banks than the other way around.  Something about political pissing matches and some not so clean water had turned Eastern North Carolina into the blue crab mecca.  Counting Miss Madison and I, there were a total of eight people staying at the Bed and Breakfast.  One annoying couple from Raleigh (well the wife seemed nice, I think she has spent the past 1000 years listening to her husband tell you his opinion on everything), a nice pair from Greensboro, NC who recently just moved back to the states from an exotic locale in Europe, and a love struck duo of San Diegoans who were looking for a reason to get out of their little weather nirvana and everything Ron Burgundy.

After exchanging autographs (Miss Madison even got a hug) with Bill and promising him a 300 x 250 banner ad on here for free room rentals in the future (just kidding, I’m not that much of a whore……wait a minute yes I am), we were off to the Bodie Island Lighthouse. Unlike your favorite villain in the movie Point Break, this is pronounced as “body.” Recently, visitors were finally allowed to climb to the pinnacle, but, once again, the March visit and budget cuts in the National Park service, I assume, had it closed to the public.  Always neat to see though, and one of the better gift shops I’ve come across for a National Park.

Miss Madison liked this one a lot, however, she is still scratching her head on why it is so far inland.

Before we headed up north to seek out the wild Banker horses that are known to roam the top of the island, I had to take Miss Madison to some various shops and boutiques so she could get her inner tourist on.  Just to show I have a sense of humor, I did include me in a ridiculous skipper hat (not pictured me riding a dolphin because of course Miss Madison is an iPhone loyalist and her cell phone camera works about as well as a Polaroid circa 1985 #TeamAndroid). Is that the real reason you didn’t include it?  That Miss Madison is such the jokester at times, she is the editor in chief of this website and thinks the dolphin picture is blog worthy. Also, anybody got an extra 50 bucks so I can get a Thriller album clock?

Mental note:  Keep Miss Madison out of the Outer Banks Ben Franklin’s and the Seagreen Gallery!  

After a quick pit stop in Duck, NC to grab a sandwich from a local deli and enjoy it with overcast views of the Albemarle Sound and seagull boxing mathces over the tomatoes I threw out, we were off to Corolla, NC in pursuit of the Banker horses.  We didn’t find any horses this trip (nor were we willing to pay for the tour that guarantees nothing), but Miss Madison and I had free reign of the beach and the 60 mph winds accompanying it.  My extra spidey senses kicked in, and we literally banged home more “quality” seashells than I have ever been a part of on any trip to the Outer Banks.  Miss Madison had me on the brink of death, fighting the waves crashing in to get a chunk of some mysterious purple striped shell, but she and I also enjoyed Cake By The Ocean (just kidding…maybe) during our time in Corolla.  It was a seashell orgy, and why I would come back here again in the off-season!  Walking around on the dunes while taking artillery-style fire from the blowing sand was kind of surreal.  Kind of an inner zen moment just being that isolated from the rest of the country.  We were going to travel up the beach to the secret community that is only accessible via the beach road but time was getting short.

Spain must have pissed off the ocean that day and it was taking it out on the East Coast!

These two seagulls were engaging in mortal combat for the tomato I threw out!

Instead we headed off to the Currituck Beach Lighthouse and surrounding area so I could finally scale one of these behemoths again.  The grounds of the Currituck Lighthouse aren’t under the National Park flag, and they are more than willing to take your money to climb up the hollow staircase to the top.  I wish the weather was a little more cooperative so the views would have been more spectacular (trust me they are—this is the third time I’ve been to the top), but it’s good exercise, nonetheless, and on a windy day take that times 200 when you are that high up in the air.  My jacket was doubling as a sail and there was no cover walking around the top of the lighthouse!

That person in the salmon colored jacket looks familiar!

From there it was time to say good bye to my little home away from home and head inland on our march to Charlottesville, VA.  I did convince Miss Madison that we needed to stop off in Norfolk, VA (Nurfurk is the proper Virginian designation I’ve learned), so I could show her a little bit of downtown.  Again with the weather granting the visibility of an eye patch, the water views sucked, but I did show her the Nauticus museum and the site of the USS Wisconsin. It will never grow old anytime I’m in the area.  We didn’t see any of the mighty U.S. Navy ships floating around this go around, but we will be back!

Under the cloak of darkness and both of us running on empty, we safely arrived at the home of the University of Virginia ready to call it a night and to get ready for the long drive home after we visited Monticello and the surrounding area.  To the Charlottesville, VA Holiday Inn, I apologize for turning your plumbing system into a mini beach.  Dammit though, I had my best seashell haul ever, and I needed to clean the sand off of them!  It’s not like Miss Madison and I trashed the place like a couple of roadies from The Who!

Sloane saw this picture and immediately claimed possession of 90% of them!

About it for tonight. Miss Madison is holding me at gunpoint if I don’t give a glowing review of Monticello and her favorite president Thomas Jefferson in my next post!  More pictures to edit, and I’ve got Albemarle County in Virginia trying to bill me for a sewage backup!  We had a raucous last day before heading home but that will have to wait until next time!