If there’s a state with better place names than North Carolina I can’t wait to get there. I started the day exploring Frog Island Road. It dead ends at a dock and an oyster shell pile on a creek that feeds into Albemarle Sound. 

 I had slept soundly behind a Pentecostal Church under renovation. I started the day with a cup of tea and a Gillian Welch CD, "Times A Revelator", playing. It set a mood. I decided to draw the steeple laying on the ground behind the Church. So many steeples are pointed straight toward heaven that this one seemed unique. Then I headed for the Outer Banks.

If you’ve seen one strip of a barrier beach town you’ve got a pretty good idea of what you’ll find in all of them. I spent many years visiting the beach at Fenwick Island, Delaware, so it was familiar. Even many of the same stores.

The one different feature of Nags Head was that it was Thanksgiving. Everything, excepting gas station/convenience stores was closed. That left me my pick of parking lots to sit and draw a sample of beach architecture.

Coastal Carolina is rich in visual opportunities and I passed one great looking spot after another, but I was already drawn out for the day. Two is, so far, my limit. I made a quick visit to the Bodie Island Lighthouse and it was pretty as a picture. I went over the impressive Dare Island bridge and there was a yacht basin on the west end filled with serious fishing boats — big ocean-going yachts ready to head out into the Gulf Stream. 

I turned left opting for the coastal road and was immediately warned to watch out for endangered Red Wolves that might be crossing. Who knew there were wolves in North Carolina? I didn’t, but there are a few. They’re red and endangered. This was near the Alligator River, where I once had a long night in a sand storm while delivering a yacht, but that’s another story.

The road was so smooth and sparkling it could have been made of crushed diamonds. There was no traffic and only a handful of intersecting roads. They were mostly access to a military bombing range in the middle of a swamp. The general level of endangerment did seem kind of high. At Blunt Point, there was a commercial fishing dock that would have made a great jigsaw puzzle. 

There was water everywhere. The roads are raised on beds with ditches on either or both side. There’s probably a local name for these ditches, but I don’t know it. Swales? Sloughs? Bayous? Canals? Some are so big they are probably navigable.

At Engelhard, I finally got out of the serious swamp and back into farmland. There is still lots of farming in the south. They’re not covering up their fields with solar panels so they must still be making money. In the last two days, I’ve seen cotton, rape, soybeans, cabbages, corn, and a few things I didn’t recognize.

Engelhard was so picturesque that I could have spent a week drawing there.  A year. But, I pushed on until my eye was caught by a sign offering wildlife viewing and the command to turn right. Next to the turn an outfitter’s shop had a big picture of a bear. There was an out building that had “skinning shed” written on it. I turned right.

At the end of the road I came to the Mattamuskeet Lodge. Various large wading birds were in the water and there was an RV park for duck hunters. The Lodge was originally a pumping station in an historic attempt to drain the largest lake in North Carolina and reclaim it for farmland. Once the pumps were powered by coal and the smoke stack was painted like the Bodie lighthouse — pretty as a picture — Google it.

The project failed to turn a profit under several owners and was eventually turned into the Canada Goose Hunting Capital of America. When the old lodge started to become structurally unsound they turned it over to the government and now we have wildlife viewing and duck blinds.

I ended my day on Tick Bite Neck Road.