The un-Ocracoke vacation

Editor’s note: While it was a rough week for Ocracoke and the Outer Banks last week, on Easter weekend, the sun has come out and the winds have calmed down. The following is one family’s experience last week.

Text and photos by Patty Huston-Holm

On Palm Sunday morning and after a restful night in our apartment overlooking Silver Lake Harbor, we were intermittently seated and standing to propel our paint-chipped bikes – the old-fashioned kind with one gear and feet brakes – around the island I’d grown to love in four previous trips over five years.

My husband, Mike, and granddaughter, Ava, a feline fan, kept our eyes peeled for Ocracats as we headed for the lighthouse, significanct that it’s the oldest operating light station in North Carolina. After that, we got ice cream named after the pirate Blackbeard who died off Ocracoke Island in 1718.  

Then, some yoga on a dock, a stop at the place with crab-stuffed soft pretzels, a look at some handmade jewelry. 

At least, I smiled, 12-year-old Ava was off her media for a bit.

Then, I woke up.

The three-day Ocracoke Island excursion we had planned for months didn’t happen. I dubbed it the “un-Ocracoke vacation.”

The reason, as Hyde County Commissioner Randal Mathews stated in his March 29 Facebook post, was a “crisis.” Before that, Mathews, an island resident who I most associate with his skill and passion for kite surfing, described the frustration of Atlantic Ocean and Pamlico Sound high tide overwash on NC Highway 12 and how North Carolina Department of Transportation employees “worked tirelessly” to clear the road of sand and add sandbags to keep the water from drifting in.

At the same time, the island’s newspaper, Ocracoke Observer, was reporting about the “dire situation” that, while going on a long time, most recently kicked up again on the Outer Banks in December 2023.

For Ocracoke residents, lawns are flooded, anxiety about medical service access is heightened, and everyday services – food and mail delivery and garbage collection – are impacted. Businesses suffer. Officials worried about ocean water buckling the road.

I scanned the NC Ferry System Facebook, seeing 200 comments with some condolences for Ocracoke residents and others cruelly saying it’s time to let the island go. People getting into the business of where other people live always irritates me.

“We have it better than the people there who can’t get off,” I said out loud more than once as each day our traveling trio tried to figure out if we might get two, then one and even perhaps scrape a few hours of our planned three nights/four days on Ocracoke.

Phone calls and Internet searches with glimmers of Ocracoke hope eventually extinguished became part of our thrice-daily routine to salvage the March 23 to 26 vacation.

“We’re vagabonds,” I joked half-heartedly as we packed and unpacked at four locations. “And it’s not normally this cold.”

Ava, who we retrieved from her cozy warm Florida home, walked around the Outer Banks in a blanket.  Even as Ohioans, the 30-to-40-degree chill for me and Mike wasn’t pleasant or expected.

I did my best to create positivity. This, I said, was an opportunity for our trio to learn about the power of wind and water, what sand can and cannot do, and, mostly, flexibility and adaptability.  

Most of the time we were on islands – just not ones accessible via ferry boat.

From our ocean side room at Lighthouse View (recommended by Ocracoke’s Harbor Inn that graciously refunded my deposit there), we watched the largest waves we’d ever seen bounce upon huge sandbags.  As the sky darkened and we were tucked inside this Buxton Beach area of Cape Hatteras, we listened to an indescribable roar and learned that the impact could be more than shoreline and roadways — that the Atlantic’s storm surge might be causing petroleum contamination from Cold War-era Navy infrastructure was being investigated around us.

After one Buxton night and the realization the Hatteras ferry would not be running in time for us to board it, we drove back up the coast, first through a storm of sea foam reminiscent of snow from Ohio, and then slowly and carefully through brown puddles in Rodanthe (nothing like how Nicholas Sparks described it in his 2002 novel).

We salvaged fun along the way.  We consumed smoothies and acai bowls as Ava painted a ceramic cat at Avon’s Studio 12, where a photo of owner Dawn Eskins’s relatives from Ohio is on one wall.  We met a delightful artist over coffee at the nearby Ugly Mug. I bought a fascinating 150-page guide (seven pages mention Ocracoke) about North Carolina sand in a downtown Manteo bookstore.

We returned to Norfolk, Va., where Ava was flying home, and had amazing experiences in an art museum, glass making workshop, aquarium and exploring the now retired 1940s, Wisconsin Navy ship.

My granddaughter lives near Miami, Fla., and is familiar with beaches.  Without realizing it, those sections of sand she’s experienced are polluted with people, houses, businesses.  I wanted her to experience the many charms of Ocracoke, such as its unspoiled beach. It is pristine – except when nature spoils it.

Patty Huston-Holm, a semi-retired journalist, worked for the Ocracoke Observer in April 2023.  She plans to work again this April, arriving via Swan Ferry on April 1.