Outer Banks, North Carolina

This morning we were up and on the road again by 9:30. Our first stop was the Bodie Island light house. The kids secured stamps in their National Park passport books before continuing on towards Fort Raleigh. While I quit running several years ago because of bad knees, we soon found ourselves in the middle of the Nags Head marathon! The course was laid out perfectly, so our delay was minimal. We took the back road into Fort Raleigh to explore the Lost Colony. In the late 1500s Sir Walter Raleigh sponsored a trip to send a group of English Settlers to Roanoke Island to help colonize the new world. Their leader came back to England a couple of years later to secure more supplies, but when he returned to Roanoke several years later, the settlers had all disappeared. The fate of the Lost Colony remains one of the great mysteries of our history.

The drive from the Outer Banks into Durham was uneventful except for the 40 minutes we spent on the bridge crossing the sound. Apparently the rotating draw bridge broke while letting several ships through, so we ate lunch in the trailer on the bridge in a line of cars that stretched for several miles. We arrived at the Birchwood campground by Duke with just enough time to park and get set up before it go dark