Wow! The last few days have been more than just a little busy and now I need to take a few days and just relax.
We completed our trek up the Outerbanks of North Carolina and have now made our way to Fort Story, Virginia Beach, Virginia. The trek took us about three days and was filled with many learning adventures for the kiddos and me too!
We started off at Fort Macon where we not only learned about an early American fort, but also about the effects of trash on the ecosystem of the outer bank islands as well as some of the sea creatures who call this area home through various exhibits in the visitor center. I did not realize the impact the exhibits had on the kids until a day and a half later when we were camping at Oregon Inlet Campground at Nags Head.
We all went out to explore the beach next to our campground after eating supper. I was walking along the beach with Little One stopping here and there to dig in the sand when the older two children came running up and said, “Look at all this trash we found. And we found some egg cases too!” While I’d been exploring with Little One, they had been collecting rubbish that had washed up or been left on the beach. See, the National Park Service allows people to purchase permits to drive vehicles along the coast and park at the shoreline for the day and it would seem many don’t follow the “Leave No Trace” policy. My kids had remembered the exhibit on ocean pollution from Ft. Macon and decided to do something about it. So, they collected up most of what they could find along about ½ mile stretch of beach and we lugged it back to the campground to throw away.
The two types of egg cases they had found belonged to whelks and skates. They had seen examples of them also on display at Fort Macon in a different exhibit and were able to identify them when they saw them on the beach and brought them to me to take pictures.
The next day we spent exploring Roanoke Island and learning about ‘The Lost Colony’ as well as making a stop by Kitty Hawk and learning about the Wright brothers and the flying experiments they conducted there. The children enjoyed coming up with their own theories about where the colonists disappeared to as well as trekking up the hill the Wright brothers had to climb every day they conducted their experiments. The Junior Ranger Program at both locations encouraged them to dig into history and learn about people who still have an impact on our society to this day.
So now we’ve landed at Fort Story and have been fortunate enough to meet up with another roof top camper who has been doing the thing much longer than we have and with a much more advanced set up. Shout out to Tavon and all his advice on 12v fridge/freezers, solar panel set-ups, and portable batteries. We’re still not at his level, but we’re in the planning stages and maybe next summer when we travel to Alaska we’ll have got there.
Now to clean out and reorganize the truck (checking of course for ants) and try to squeeze in a bit of downtime before we move on to Chincoteague Island and D.C.