Our Night in Rodanthe

Many of you have no doubt seen the movie trailers for or the film “Nights in Rodanthe”.  Our story was a little different and there was no Richard Gere or it may have totally been worth it.

Grandma and Grandpa brought my mom and my uncle to the southern North Carolina coast when they were very young, so we thought it would be cool to go to the Outer Banks while they were here. According to the Garmin it was about a five and a half hour drive from my apartment to Cape Hatteras. We figured, eh thats close enough to go down and back in one day. You know, it might have been accept we decieded to go the day there is a tropical type storm off the coast. Now lets be clear, it was a tropical depression and it wasn’t really a tropical storm, but close.

We left Southern Pines at about 9am and drove through on and off down pours, it was wierd. We’d be driving and nothing, then suddenly it’s a deluge and I can’t see the road. This was the whole trip there on and off.  Many of you have not been to, or know much about the Outer Banks.  Here is a map.

You can see all the Outer Banks really is, is a series of thin islands that protect the NC mainland so to speak. We drove through Plymouth, across a bridge that seemed much to long and much to close to the water to get to Manteo where we stopped for lunch at Hurricane Moe’s so Mom could have scallops! (that was goal number two for the day, if we we’re going to the coast Mom wanted scallops).

Here is the first bridge we encountered. This bridge goes from the mainland to Roanoke Island.

Yes the picture is crappy, but this is what we were driving in going over the bridge….I don’t like bridges… at all so this part of the trip was a lot of fun, and let me tell you there are quite a few bridges and some of them are really really long…… like you get on the bridge and you can’t even see land.

This is one such bridge, we are already on it……and had been for a bit… and it just keeps going…..

We made though and the weather cleared up rather nicely. Once we got onto the Outer Banks there is one road. It goes north and south. If you go north you go up to Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills, if you go south you go towards Hatteras. Past Hatteras there is a free ferry which will take you to Ocracoke Island where there is another light house. Past that is another ferry that takes you to main land NC or SC. WE went south and about three miles after getting on Hwy 12 you come to Bodie Island Lighthouse.

You want a sign? This one was in the Bodie Island Museum/gift shop. This should have been a clue that maybe we picked the wrong day to come out here.

About twenty minutes further down the road is the Cape Hatteras light house. Not a big deal right? Well this little storm was cause eight foot swells we find out later. Want another sign?

This is what I drove my mom’s Honda Odessy through at Mirlo Beach. Ok Minnesota folk, how often have you been told never to drive though water that is covering the road way. Yea me too. I was seriously about to pee myself driving though this. Mom is loving it. She had said a couple of days/weeks before about how cool it would be to see storm damage….she got her wish.

See all the sand on the side of the road? That was from the morning tide. Us being Land dwellers kind of forgot about the whole tide thing, and didn’t really think again about the water thing. We drove through this at about 2pm. Tide went out at about 10am and we find out later that night that the road had been closed from about 6am until noon that day whilst the equipment seen in the above picture could clear the sand off the road……. you can see where this may be going.

Anyway, we blissfully carry on down the road toward the Hatteras lighthouse. Blissfully in part because the sun was finally out, woo hooo. Following are a bunch of pictures of the light house and the beach. Now at this point knowing he couldn’t climb the light house Tom took off to get pictures of the ocean for us while Mom and I strolled the light house grounds, so prepare for picture-palooza.

So after we got a good look at the light house and the grounds we figured we had better try to get back home. The local radio station had been talking about how the road had been closed in the morning and how the chanced of the road closing again when the tide comes back in was pretty high. In one of the pamphlets we had picked up was a tide calender. Afternoon high tide was at about 530, we left the lighthouse at about 345 thinking we had plenty of time.

We reached Mirlo Beach in Rodanthe and 420 to cop cars blocking off what would normally be the road….. which at that time was a small lake. I pulled up and asked the officer how long he thought the road would be closed. 6 hours, if it re-opened……Great. So here we are a bunch of tourist who have no where to stay and no meds with us….cause we weren’t planning on staying overnight we never thought to bring my grandparents medications with us.

We finally decided we would pull over somewhere and nap for a while then grab food and one of the places that had a bar so it wouldn’t look wierd if we were there for a few hours. So we drove back and forth between Rodanthe and Buxton trying to decide where to stop and where to eat and if we should just plan on staying the night. I wanted to go home…I started to panic. I’m kind of claustriphobic and the thought of being stuck on the island was kind of driving me a little batty.  Seriously. So we pulled into the parking lot of the Froggy Dog and kicked back for a bit. Well apparently somone noticed and the owner of the joint came out to see if we were ok, and I explained what was going on and that we were just nappin for a bit and we would be in a little later for grub and hopefully be able to go home, she was very nice and said that was fine and if we needed anything to pop in.  We did eventually go in and get some food, which would have been really good if I hadn’t been so nauseated. My nerves were a wreck….couldn’t place why then, still haven’t figured it out. So we hung out, ate, took in the atmosphere. They usually have kareoke on Thurseday nights….. but the people that run it couldn’t get on the island…figures.  I went out the parking lot and decorated it with what little iI did eat and we headed out. While we were down that way we check with the local Comfort Inn to see if they would have rooms should we be stuck and then headed back up the road. We got back up to Rodanthe about 930 and saw:

OK so my nerves go completely haywire, I was damn sure I was going to pass out right there. I shakingly walked up to the officers and asked what our chances of getting of the island were, and he told us it should be about midnight when the crews had to road open again. They had big dumpers and scrapers trying to scrape the four feet of sand off of the road.  I asked him how often this kind of thing happens and he goes “oh all the time”….you would think in a world of modern engineering someone could fix that…a bridge, a wall, something! Ok…calm myself….Walk back to the car, pull to the side of the road and prepare to hang for a while. We weren’t the only ones, there was a small line like preparing for a parade along that road. People slowly trickle up the officers and check on the status and about 1030 one person stops by the van and tells us that they aren’t going to be able to open the road. Apparently the equipment couldn’t handle the sand and kept breaking down and the they weren’t getting more equipment in but it wouldn’t be there until five in the morning….crap……more roadside decorating and Tom takes the drivers seat and we head back to the hotel get a couple of rooms and wait until morning. When we got to the hotel there was a Dare County Sheriffs deputy there and he gave me the number for the non-emergency dispatch and told me to call in the morning to get an update on the road status.

We settled in as best we could for the night and woke up about 7 the next morning, called the emergency dispatch who told us the road was open. As we are checking out one of the desk gals was looking at the Rodanthe webcam, and said that it looked like the road was closed again because she coudln’tsee any traffic moving. Using the desk phone I called the non-emergency number again and was told they were just running another scrapping and it should be re-opened in about fiftenn minutes. We loaded up the van and got the He** out of there while we still could. I still wasn’t feeling real great some Tom got the privilage of the sunny and uneventful drive home. The road looked so much different than the night before. The sun was shining and the wind had calmed down so it was actually a nice drive. The big difference was the huge sand piles along the road in Rodanthe.

I had completely sworn off the outer banks after that night but now I might like to go back as long as the weather is going to cooperate and we plan on staying the night somewhere!