It took us about seven hours of driving to get from Washington area to Hatterras Island: the most Southern Island in the chain where to you can get with roads and bridges. The islands to the south of Hatterras Island are accessible by ferries only.
The outer side of the banks is the open Atlantic Ocean where the water is clean and the sand bottom is nice, but strong ocean winds may create severe conditions of hurricanes as well as strong waves and currents. The strong ocean wind blowing along the coast is the usual weather for the outer side of islands. Those winds made North Carolina «First in Flight» state since the Outer Bank was the place were Wright Brothers flew their first controlled and powered airplane on 17th December 1903. The inner side of the banks is a system of very shallow and warm bays ( «Sounds» ), but the silty bottom makes swimming in some places unpleasant there.
The weather this time was nice : sunny, about 18-20C ( 64-68F ) in the daytime and about 10-12C ( 20-54F ) in the night. The water in the sea was about 16-17C ( 61-63F ) with some waves which were not too bad.
2004 May
2004 September
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