Longing for the Outer Banks

Ike Adams

I am not a big vacationer, now that the season is upon us, but I am always full of well-intentioned advice. And mostly, I recommend that you sleep, work in the garden and send the kids off to camp when it comes your time to do the deed.

I have had much opportunity to frequently travel across our country and even cross the borders a few times, but I can count on the fingers of one hand, assuming two of them being amputated, the number of places that I would revisit if I was rolling in the dough — and none of them would be in traditional touristy vacation season.

Absolutely the best vacation that Loretta and I have taken, sans kids, was to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and we did it in mid-September after the summer crowds had vacated the beaches from Norfolk, Va., to the southern tip of Cape Hatteras. We intended to spend a week of wandering and fishing, but we spent nearly three because the lodging prices were maybe 80 percent or less than what they’d been when everybody and his brother had fought for reservations in the summer.

And we had the windswept beaches, fishing piers, lighthouses, a zillion sea birds and miles of golden ripening sea oats to walk among to ourselves for some 100 miles along, in my opinion, the most beautifully wild and accommodating portion of our country’s eastern shore.

And the fishing was almost self-defense. We put a bait off the end of the pier at Nag’s Head and we caught some things which we looked up in a field guide or asked a local if it was fit to eat. But mostly, we filled our coolers with sea trout, blue fish, flounder, spotted perch and the like. We found a place that sold dry ice and we must have brought home at least 100 pounds of filets to share with friends and neighbors.

Another time we flew into Pensacola, Fla., in late April and rented a small van and drove the costal back roads over the course of 10 days without losing sight of the Gulf of Mexico, from there to Mobile, Ala., along the Gulf Shores. Before I die, I want to make that trip again with a better camera and fishing equipment than we had 20 years ago. We did that trip in late April of 1999 or so and had a neighbor making sure our teenage kids did not burn down the house while we were gone. I’d like to do it again without calling home every hour, on the hour.

Once in a spring back in the mid-90s, I was on business in San Diego with time to spare and my good friend, Sandy Walker, hauled me and some other friends several hundred miles down the Baja Peninsula to a little place on the Sea of Cortez called Puerto Cetas. The fishing was self-defense but the tide rolled in at night over scalding volcanic hot springs wherein folks from several centuries past had dug bathing tubs and crafted steps into them.

We would wander down to the shore in the wee hours of the morning when the tide came in and washed out the scalding water and we’d sit there, as close to naked as we could get and still be modest in the ancient tubs and soak in stinking mineral waters until they got too hot to stand.

And then we’d wash off in the natural surf so cool it made our skin go hard and bumpy. I’d do that again in a heartbeat if I had the cash and a guide I trust as much as Sandy.

But over the last three Junes, I along with my wife and a few dedicated volunteers, through the auspices and facilities of the Garrard County Extension Service have spent a week of my vacation time “teaching” a day camp on digital photography to a select dozen or so 4-H kids.

Rose Pruett and her teenage son Henry Pruett (who is an accomplished “graduate” of the program) along with Ultimate 4-H Leader, Dorothy Murphy, provide expert, hands-on composition advice and the kids go crazy shooting studio portraits of one another and then traipsing around Mrs. Patterson’s farm where the sheep and horse and cat and chickens are remarkably friendly and where the fruit trees and tended flowers are always in perfect bloom.

And it wouldn’t happen without the sponsorship of 4-H Agent Susan Campbell and techno volunteer, John Rucker, who somehow gets those photo files off the cameras and down to a manageable number without going brain dead.

We teach or at least associate ourselves with the young folk over three days, but we spend a day or so setting up and taking down sophisticated photography equipment hoping that the kids will get some appreciation for our passion for photography and maybe help the itch catch on. And that happens with at least a couple of young folk every year.

But what I treasure is watching those kids scoop the championship and blue ribbons at the county fair and then watching many of them go on to win at the state fair because they learned to see from a different perspective and catch that vision on a piece of paper.

Yep. It’s a hard week of work for me, but it’s the best thing I can do to help kids become champions in just a few days while teaching them some expertise that will last a lifetime. And, yep, I do wind up exhausted at the end of the week, but I schedule another for July that will be far less tiresome.

In the meantime, Lo and I dream of the Outer Banks in mid-September.

Text Only