A Month in a Little Village by the Sea

[Magicman]

I wish it was not a thousand miles.  I doubt that we will ever take those long trips again.  I am saying that and remembering when we never hesitated taking 5k, 10k, or more trips.

[Tom K]

Well we just missed you by a few days, the with & I just got back from a trip to Ocracoke. We spent a couple nights at the campground.

Its interesting to see your comment on wildlife a few post back. When we visited the lighthouse there were a couple trails out of the marsh heading towards the walkway, I was wondering what they were from. I'm assuming nutria from your comment. As we were waiting for the ferry I saw what I'm guessing was nutria walk across the road behind us 100-150 yards back as well.

[SawyerTed]

Tom K sorry we missed the chance to meet at the coast.   

More than likely those were nutria.  Rabbits make those little paths and holes in the marsh too.  Raccoons don't look like ours at home.  The Outer Banks raccoons are scrawny and look awful unless they access food scraps in dumpsters and trash cans. 

Hope it was a good trip.  

[SawyerTed]

The expedition has begun.  

The camper and the boat require two trips each way.  So the drive with a couple of stops takes about 7 hours.   It's 300 +/- to the ferry terminal from my house.  

The drive isn't bad except for having to go through Raleigh.   Raleigh is not quite Atlanta but it's bad enough.   

I'm waiting with the camper on the 4:30 ferry to Ocracoke.  This terminal is in Cedar Island, NC.  It's not the middle of nowhere- I went through there to get here.  Is 30 plus miles of rivers, creeks, marshes and Core Sound on either side of the road between here and Beaufort, NC. 

There ferry trip is 26 n. miles and we will travel 10-11 knots.   Between loading, the passage and unloading it works out to about 2.5 hours.   We do leave sight of land for a little while and the Pamlico Sound can get rough.  Today the sound appears to be relatively flat. 

Ocracoke, both the island and the village, is in the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.   Portsmouth is across Ocracoke Inlet, about 5 miles across, is in Cape Lookout National Seashore.   

For those who may wonder about our camper, it's a 24' Jayco Whitehawk, it has 1 slide out and is a nice camper for 2 people.   It is a bunkhouse with 2 full size bunks but if you are more than 12 years old or taller than 5'6" they are awful.  The bunks are storage for us.   So it's a good basic camper without many frills - not a 5th wheel.

[stanmillnc]

Just missed you Ted - I was actually fishing around Portsmouth Island on the Ocracoke inlet side a few weeks ago.  Got a limit of chopper blues and some bull reds. Thanks for the updates here; I'm thinking of doing the same thing, volunteering there when I retire! 

[SawyerTed]

Setting up the camper last night was relatively easy and a non-event.  It was about twice as long getting setup by myself.   Emily does her jobs and it makes things much smoother.   Without her the routine is off.

The only real issue is the sewer connection.  Usually the connections are very close to ground level - it allows gravity to do its thing.   This one is 6-8" above ground level so the last foot has to go uphill.  This violates one of the plumber's basic laws.  "- -it don't go uphill!"  I'll have to rectify that some way, probably with an improvised board/ramp.  The sewer line slinky isn't tall enough.

This is a nice new "volunteer village" of 10 campsites that Cape Hatteras NS has built for seasonal staff and volunteers.   One or two sites are designated for Portsmouth volunteers.   The other 8 are occupied with all manner of campers.  There's an ancient Airstream up to a Class A diesel pusher.

After setting up, I walked over to SmacNally's open air restaurant.   It's a beer and wine bar kind of place on the marina dock.  I sat at the bar with a retired Naval Aviator and his two girlfriends (!?!)   It was an entertaining evening listening to his stories - Iraq, Afghanistan and so on.  The women had been enjoying adult beverages prior to joining him, so their antics were funny.  We laughed a lot! 

Most importantly, I had blackened grilled drum for supper. 

Today will be pretty routine stuff - grocery shopping and odds and ends at the camper.  I did find a tire on the camper has decided to "loosen it belt."  The tread is now round instead of relatively flat.  That will have to be dealt with in the next couple of weeks. 

[Southside]

The man just has to live life on the edge.  

[SawyerTed]

The rig on the ferry.



The volunteer village - Rv sites.




Our camper

[Bert]

Nice Ted! Hope to be able to do something like that one day. 

[SawyerTed]

Several Forumites have mentioned doing some volunteering.  I'm all for it! 

 There are lots of places where services suffer unless volunteers are present to provide those services because our parks don't have enough paid personnel.

Why don't they have enough paid personnel?  Mostly because our parks are extremely popular and resources get moved from visitor services to maintenance and enforcement/safety due to the volumes of visitors.   There's other reasons and other places to talk about those.  

There are many many positions that go unfilled every year.   We have fellow volunteers who full time RV and move from volunteer location to location throughout the year.  

It's not too early to start working on a relationship with the park or site where you ultimately want to volunteer.   Get to know the volunteer coordinator and other park staff.  Knowing someone certainly will help.   

Most state parks, National Parks, National Historic Sites, BLM Campgrounds, Fish and Wildlife, Army Corps of Engineers sites and others offer volunteer opportunities.   

There are two ways to find out what's available:  the website for the specific site you want to volunteer for and volunteer.gov.  Volunteer.gov is searchable by state, by agency etc.  Most specific sites have a "get involved" menu item with volunteer listed there.  

The opportunities are varied.  There are positions for nearly any age and nearly any physical ability - indoors and out.  There's being a docent/guide, visitor center staff, campground host, maintenance and grounds work, working on historic trains (I applied one time to shovel coal on a historic steam train).  I've seen trail maintenance, photography, gardening and just plain old janitor positions and on and on.  

Many volunteer positions offer housing or an RV pad in exchange for 32 hours/week of service.  

Volunteer positions can be a weekend, a week, a month or several months depending upon the park.  Most positions coincide with the tourist season at that location.  Winter in Florida is popular, obviously.  Summer, not so much.   

There are seasonal paid positions in many of the same locations.  

Keep in mind that some locations are more rigid than others.  Cape Hatteras makes volunteers at the historic sites, like lighthouses, wear ranger like uniforms.   Cape Lookout provides us with shirts and we provide our own tan or green shorts.  We keep our own time sheets, others login, punch clocks or are on set schedules. 

"Work camping" is a variation in the private sector.  Most of the positions are paid positions in private/commercial campgrounds or resort areas with an RV pad provided.  There are work camp websites with listings for help wanted and positions wanted.  

[Ron Scott]

Most of the Federal and State recreational facilities could not open and operate without the dedicated Volunteer Corp that supports them.

[SawyerTed]

We arrived in Ocracoke on Saturday without incident.  The weather has been pleasant with a couple of showers.  

Monday we started carrying our gear and food to Portsmouth.    We decided to spend Monday night in Portsmouth.

When we started making the bed we realized our bag with sheets towels was in Ocracoke.   That required a return trip to Ocracoke.  It was super time so we ate in Ocracoke at SmacNally's 

All pretty standard stuff but it got "interesting" from there.  

The short version is I ran the boat aground on the way back to Portsmouth (no excuses I wasn't paying attention-all my fault).  After a half hour on working getting free, I had to call one of the ferry captains in Ocracoke to pull us free.  He pulled us off the shoal with an easy pull.   

So we were pretty whipped from pushing and pulling in the boat.   

We got the bed made, finally.  It was 11;00 pm when we went to bed.  Around 1:30 our power went out!  I had to get up and go to the generator shed to figure it out.   Got it restarted and went back to bed.   The power went out at 3:30 am and again around 6:00.   

Turns out the transfer switch is malfunctioning maybe due to poor battery condition.   

So last night we came back to Ocracoke.

The problem is the volunteer quarters get pretty hot durning the day.  Yesterday at 6:30 pm the bedroom temperature was 86 degrees and it's a humid heat.   Can't open the windows because the biting insects will carry you away.  

Since we have a perfectly good camper in Ocracoke we will be riding back and forth until the maintenance guys can sort things out.  

Such is the life in a little village by the sea. 

[SawyerTed]

Tuesday we did building cleanup, sweeping sand out, restroom maintenance and s few chores around Portsmouth.  

We had 28 visitors in the village and 4 fishermen on the dock.  

[SawyerTed]

Our problems with the photovoltaic system turned out to be weak batteries.   

I wound up helping the maintenance crew troubleshoot the system.  The batteries read 12 or so volts but just couldn't deliver the amps needed. 

There were 20 200 amp hour batteries on hand.  We put 10 in place of 12 150 amp hour batteries.  So there's now 2000 amp hours of storage theoretically.  In reality it should be around 1000 amp hours.  

Things are working fine now.  The little AC is humming along.  It's only run with the 7,500 kw generator is running.  

Hopefully by morning the batteries will have a full charge too.  

[SawyerTed]

Well we tried. 

The photovoltaic system kicked off last night about 8:00 pm.  We had to make a late evening run back to Ocracoke. 

I'm thinking the batteries just didn't get charged enough and am beginning to suspect the generator.   

On a positive note the fish are biting.

The maintenance crew has been restoring some of the buildings.  I'll post some photos later today.  

[SawyerTed]

Our annual volunteer experience at Portsmouth starts next week.  We will be there until mid July.  As best we can tell, we will be commuting by boat this year.  The off grid solar/battery/generator system is not functioning as of two weeks ago. 

Tomorrow we start our trek to Ocracoke and Portsmouth, NC.  

Here's a little YouTube that includes a quick clip of me sweeping the Visitor Center porch and riding by on a SxS.  

https://youtu.be/fyoBw4PV1x4

And a PBS video about the village and the homecoming held in even years. 

https://youtu.be/vhvTTjZDHxU

[Stephen1]

Always a favourite topic to follow along. Keep the pictures coming for sure. 

[SawyerTed]

We left Germanton NC this morning about 7:00.  We had to stop at Harkers Island at the Cape Lookout National Seashore HQ then meet the ferry at 4:30.   

This is me just a few minutes from Ocracoke.   It's 6:30 pm now - 281 miles, 2 ferries and a nice lunch at Fish Hook Grill on Harkers Island.  One ferry adds about 20 minutes to our trip but we bypass two cities and about 12 miles of road construction.  

We took our time but it really does take a long time to get here.  Even longer pulling the boat.  

[Resonator]

Did you talk the ferry boat captain into getting you on the fishing hot spots?

[SawyerTed]

Over a lifetime of coming to Ocracoke, fishing with charters and on my own, I have an idea of where the fish are at a given time.  

NC has closed both the flounder and sea trout fisheries completely. They are catch and release only which is fine.  We like to eat seafood so keeping a few is good.  Drum, bluefish and mackerels are all available.  Of course off shore and bottom fishing are both options too.  

The ferry captain has a public job so he probably knows less about the hot spots than my retired fishing friends here in Ocracoke.