Oriental to Bath

We had to tear ourselves away from Oriental the next morning. Our room at the Oriental Marina & Inn was wonderful and the food delicious. If you visit, ask for a room upstairs, which is actually an efficiency apartment with a loft bedroom and fantastic views of the marina. There’s a tiki bar, pool and restaurant on the property and a nice coffee/ice-cream shop across the street.

Only on the coast, a bike with barnacles

Shrimp boat (not Bubba Gump)

Last ferry, then only 6 miles back to Bath

Cedar Island to Oriental

Seventy miles of open marshland, swamp and pine forest lie between Cedar Island and Oriental. The terrain is flat but the distance, winds, mosquitoes and lack of drinkable water can make for a difficult ride. We spent the day putting one pedal stroke in front of the other until the miles were behind us. At the end of the day we were rewarded with one of the most beautiful towns on the North Carolina coast.

Two recreational vehicles passing

Viewing the vast void, a vacuum of vanishing vacationers

Leaving Bath at daybreak

Touring bikes are modern day versions of servant carried sedan chairs or passenger elephants. They creep slowly through the world at a pace perfect for soaking in the view. Touring bikes can be therapeutic tools to help rat-race refuges be more ‘in the moment’ and soon after the first pedal stroke the bike itself disappears and all that’s left is the experience of traveling.

Soon after leaving Bath, I forgot about my stressful job, mortgage payments, student loans, taxes and all the chronic irritants that eat away at my wellbeing. All that remained was the experience of traveling.

In Ocracoke we had a short layover before catching the Ferry to Cedar Island.

Exploring Bath

Exploring Bath takes about 15 minutes. If you are a skilled rock thrower, you should be able to toss a stone from one end of Bath to the other with little effort. Bath is a beatuiful tiny place. We finally found a town smaller than Bryson City!

Leaving town. . .

Up at 6:00 am, load car, drop the kids off at school (see you Tuesday!!), drive seven hours from one end of the state to the other, check-in at motel and, yes, I would like to get on my bike and explore Bath. And that is just what we did . . .

Biking on a boat

One of the coolest things to do on a bike is ride a ferry. Maybe because it’s such a novel thing for me, coming from the mountains. A couple of years ago we went to Raquel’s hometown, New York City, for the Five-Boro Bike Tour. We rode the Staten Island ferry as part of the Tour. We also rode from Manhattan to Coney Island just to eat a famous Nathan’s hot dog and then took our bikes on the subway to get back. That was cool too; to me. Raquel was pretty blasé about it. It’s hard to impress a New Yorker, but for a country hick like me…I was excited, “Can we do it again, can we?”

We’ve ridden the ferries at the Outer Banks several times in the past few years. The OBX ferries are small and most folks get out of their cars and mingle. Sport fishermen drinking beer, families with kids and dogs, business people, UPS drivers and occasionally bike tourists, all crowded onto the deck. It’s neat to explore the coastline by bike, then ride onto a boat and explore in a different way, then hop back on your bike and off you go. I love that.

It’s also very inexpensive. What would it cost to charter a boat to sight-see for a couple of hours? You can ride the OBX ferries for just a few dollars. The ride from Swan Quarter to Ocracoke and the ride from Ocracoke to Cedar Island are each about 2 ½ hours long. That’s plenty of time to meet other passengers and have a nice picnic lunch before getting back on the bike.

As you can tell, I’m getting pretty excited about our Outer Banks trip. We leave Friday!

Jack

Reflections on Touring

So we’ve been described as “avid tourers”. I agree, we are. Jack and I love to tour. We have not done any long tours, most of our tours are short (4-5 days to a week or so) but we’ve done quite a few in the 4 years we’ve been together. This summer we will be embarking on our longest and most difficult tour together, 2 weeks on the Blue Ridge Pkwy/Skyline Drive. Next summer we plan another 2 or 3 weeks to do the Pacific Coast Highway (Astoria to San Francisco).

Although Jack and I talk about taking several months off and doing an extended tour, the truth is that we really love being in the Smoky Mountains and although we go away several times a year, we always look forward to coming back home. After reading several blogs recently, we were talking about this and it hit me-we just don't have the urge right now to be away from home for more than a few weeks. I said to Jack "in 20-30 years all our short tours will add up to several long tours". Jack believes we appreciate our short tours more because of the fact that they are short.

Raquel