Sight seeing around Nags Head

We haven't been out and about all that much, two reasons why; this is primarily a water based holiday and the weather. The weather has been a bit tempremental. The mornings have been generally fine, hot, humid and overcast. In the afternoon the mother and father of all thunderstorms, along with his brothers and sisters have been passing through. That has curtailed our outings a bit. But we have managed to see a few things.

Thundercloud over the bay.

The first was the Elizabethan Garden. It is a lovely wooded garden with some knot beds on the bank of the Sound. It had a lovely walk laid out and it was pleasant and cool. There is a very large statue of Queen Elizabeth I but it reminded me of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. There were lots of plants I had no idea what they were as well as roses and a lot of hosta. 

Elizabethan garden. 

We also took the boys to see the lighthouse on Bodie ( pronounced body ) Island. The Labrador current with its cold water runs south past the banks to meet the Gulf Stream which causes the build up of sandbanks which change all the time. There are hundreds of shipwrecks along this coast. The lighthouse is a beacon to tell ships to go out to sea to avoid the sandbanks. It is a lovely building painted with black and white stripes. They only allow 8 people to climb it every half hour. This is because it has a "floating" staircase, it isn't attached to the wall, but to each landing. We didn't climb it. There were no tickets available and the heat index ( like the wind chill factor, only in reverse ) made the temperature inside 100 f. I can't say I was too disappointed. The boys were though, as there was something called a Pokemon gym at the top!

A floating staircase.