Bugged

"It's 47 degrees in New York City this morning," said Andy. "That's warmer than it is here." The clouds disappeared as we drove from Nags Head to Kitty Hawk and then north. A brilliant sun warmed the land. "When we came through here on vacation for two days in 1977, this was all marsh." With hardly a plot of land vacant now, Route #158 reminds me of Boston Post Road, wall-to-wall "sell something" and a solid line of three-story houses next to the water.
We took Route #12 north toward Currituck Beach Lighthouse in Corolla. Homes along the way begged For Sale. "I'm guessing many of these have huge mortgages," said Andy.
"Why do you say that?" I asked, not following his line of reasoning. "Because so many are huge, raised beach-style houses away from town. These are the kinds of homes people buy for investment--put a little down intending to sell at a profit after a year or two.
Then the housing market collapsed and people lost their jobs. They can't afford the mortgages, but so many are for sale that it will take years to rebound. And this time of year should bring the sellers a peak price. You know, going into the summer, but it's a buyers' market, a glut of houses for sale." It made sense, but it was sad to see so many beautiful homes for sale in so beautiful a place.
We passed through Duck. Palm trees, brown and bent at a resort motel, had died, probably from frost burn. "Those trees were wrapped," said Andy. "That tells me they have a real winter here. It's too far north for palms." Even some of the long-needle pine were tinged brown.
"Corolla, what a beautiful little town," said Andy. "No ands, ifs or buts about it. In fact, the whole ride here from Kitty Hawk is lovely. Density, but not ticky-tacky."

Currituck means land of the wild geese in Indian tongue. We didn't see any, but the evidence covered the park lawn, and we heard the honking in the distance. "Birds migrate based on the length of daylight," I read in a display at the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education. Workmen were busy painting the outside; the inside included incredible displays about the history of the Whalehead Club, the vacation getaway home of Philadelphia industrialist Edward C. Knight, Jr. and his wife Marie Louise, both avid hunters. They used the house with its cork floors, corduroy walls and Tiffany light fixtures, as a private hunt club.

We browsed in the museum and learning center. "Andy, did you know that birds migrate primarily at night because it keeps their body temperatures eight degrees cooler on the average?" I asked him. I studied the map about the Atlantic flyways.
He looked at the tank of live fish that provided a cross section of underwater habitat. "I don't have my glasses," he answered.
I read the information to him.
From the boardwalks we viewed the lighthouse. "The sign says you can just about walk across Currituck Sound here," said Andy. From the island to the mainland at this point, the water is only about five feet deep, and the depth is determined more by wind than by tides controlled from the moon. Northern winds keep it low and southerly winds increase water depth."
"If I lived here, I think I'd try it," I said, "except for the cottonmouths in the marsh and the mucky bottom." Sea oats, over our head on the boardwalk, waved gently. "And probably the bugs in the summer," Andy reminded me. "This is marshland."

The lighthouse, left unpainted to distinguish it from others on the Outer Banks, flashed its warning, on for three seconds and off for 17 seconds. Visibility extended as far as 19 nautical miles. Completed in 1875, it was the first lighthouse illuminated but the last major brick lighthouse built on the 40 miles of dark Outer Banks coastline, where southbound ships veered too close to shore to avoid the Gulf Stream currents.
The mainland side of Currituck Sound looked like another world. We drove north along the coast up route #158 to #168. Fields of corn stubble lined the road with farm houses in the distance by the water. Tinges of green suggested spring at hand, and temperatures climbed. Andy cracked the window and asked me how to turn on the air in Little Red. "The next thing you know," I said, "the bugs will be out."
Road repairs made travel in Virginia a nightmare. Through Norfolk and up to Chesapeake Bay we crawled, traffic in left lanes directed in and lanes closed down by moving trucks with signs that said, Move In. Crack Repair. "They should be doing this at night," said Andy. "To top it all off, they aren't doing anything except moving traffic into one lane. That bugs me. There isn't even a repair crew or vehicle in sight, just those Left Lane Closed trucks." It took an hour to cover the miles. The redeeming grace was warm temperatures and blue skies, not much to be grateful for on a crowded city highway.
The GPS helped us find my college roommate Carol in Hampton, Virginia, for hours of catching up on years of separate histories, not to mention her treat to us of fresh Atlantic seafood.
In addition, her surprise included a tour of Fort Monroe, complete with the house where Lincoln planned the attack on Richmond, the casement where Jefferson Davis was imprisoned, the area that housed Robert E. Lee from 1831-1834, the famous chapel with its Tiffany windows, and the one-lane tunneled bridge over the water-filled moat. As we drove past Old Point Comfort Lighthouse, I noticed the red light. A little research showed that the 360 degree light showed white for 132 degrees and red for the rest. If a ship at sea noticed the red, it had entered the "danger course." We kept driving... no danger.