Historic Corolla on the Outer Banks

Hi Blog! Today is Monday, January 5, 2015. Yesterday we spent the whole day inside the RV, hunkered down, waiting for severe thunderstorms that never came. Oh well, better safe than sorry. We did use the day to our advantage. Kathy cleaned and Dave made homemade honey oatmeal bread from scratch. While the dough was rising, we replaced a broken DVD player and cleaned out the electronics cabinet. We ended up throwing out a lot of broken junk. We now have a working DVD player again.

The storm front passed in the middle of the night and today dawned bright, clear and chilly. We decided to spend another day out on the Outer Banks. This time we drove North through Kitty Hawk, Southern Shores and Duck all the way to Corolla Village. Corolla is as far as we can go north on the barrier island without a four-wheel drive vehicle. The highway ends at the Currituck Banks Reserve. From there you have to drive on the beach if you want to continue north toward Virginia.

We knew today was going to be a good day when, just around the corner from our campground, we saw a family of bald eagles - mom, day and junior - in a farmer's field with a freshly caught rabbit. Well, at least it was a good day for us and the eagles, not so much for the rabbit. The rest of the drive was uneventful.

Here we are, arriving at our first visit to the beach in North Carolina:

Corolla (pronounced Ka-RAH-la) is the name for a small village that sits beneath the Currituck Beach Lighthouse.  In 1873, when the village was still known as Jones Hill, construction began on the Currituck Beach Lighthouse. The red-brick lighthouse, which towered over the small village and the sand banks, was completed and lit on December 1, 1875. By 1895, Jones Hill was busy enough to have its own post office. The postal service, notorious for changing the traditional names of Outer Banks villages, required that the villagers send in several suggestions for an official name. The story goes that they submitted Jones Hill and Currituck Beach and were looking for other suggestions when someone mentioned that the inner part of a flower is called a corolla. That name was submitted and chosen by the postal service, forever changing the name of the small village.

Here is the Currituck Beach Lighthouse:

There are about 20 restored buildings in Corolla. Around the lighthouse is the Keeper's House and Museum Shop. There is still a keeper in residence. Here is Kathy saying "hi-ho" to a couple of their goats.

Just down Corolla Village Road from the lighthouse is the Historic Corolla School, which still holds classes, and the Corolla Wild Horse Museum. We never knew there were wild horses on the Outer Banks. We've been to Chincoteague and Assateague, which are famous for their ponies. Here in Corolla, the horses are direct descendants from Spanish Mustangs most likely shipwrecked or abandoned by the Spanish. Here is the cute little museum and book shop. (Yes, Kathy bought a calendar with pretty wild horses on it.)

From the Historic Village. we headed over to the Whalehead Club and the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education. But first, let's take a stroll along a boardwalk:

Wow.  Here is our first look at the Currituck Sound:

Although several inlets connected it directly to the Atlantic Ocean at one time or another, they have all since closed and there is now no direct access to the Ocean from the Sound.  As a result, the water in the Sound is more fresh than salty.  Its tides are not influenced by the moon, but rather by whether winds blow from the north or the south.

The lack of access to the ocean doesn't seem to bother the snowy egret or the thousands of other water fowl that use the sound on their migration routes. In fact, this area hosts 6% of the migrating fowl who winter over.  Consequently, water fowl hunting has big business in the Outer Banks for over 100 years.

We saw a snowy egret checking out his environment, and he was kind enough to pose for our photo:

In 1922, Edward Collings Knight, Jr., a man who had made his wealth in sugar and railroad and lived in the Philadelphia area, and his wife Marie-Louise LeBel Knight began work on a palatial residence to be known as "Corolla Island" (now known as the Whalehead Club). When the massive house on the sound was finally finished in 1925, it must have been quite a sight to the modest-living locals. Inside the five-story, 21,000-square-foot house are wonders to behold such as electricity, running hot and cold water, indoor bathrooms and even a refrigerator. The building is also an exceptional example – and remains so to this day – of the ornamental Art Nouveau style of architecture. What a contrast to the simple lifestyle of the locals! Today folks can take tours or reserve the Club for a wedding or other special event.

During the Knights' time, the Boathouse was a center of activity for the duck hunting that drew guests to the property. It was a place teeming with activity, where the decoys and hunting skiffs were stored, and where grain to lure the waterfowl within range of the hunters was kept. Today, a variety of artifacts from the heyday of wildfowl hunting on the Currituck Outer Banks are on display in the Boathouse, pictured below:

The Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education, located next to the mansion, is run by the North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission. We strolled through the exhibit center and learned more about what makes the Outer Banks so unique.

From the Historic Corolla Village, we biked down to the Currituck Banks Reserve where Highway 12 ends at the beach. The reserve is an example of a low-salinity estuarine ecosystem, and contains a variety of habitats, including beach, sand dunes, grasslands, shrub thicket, maritime forest, brackish and freshwater marshes, tidal flats, and subtidal soft bottoms. We tried to take the bikes along the beach but found the pedalling difficult:

However, the view from the dunes was amazing:

After having driven through mile after mile of housing developmens and shopping districts it was amazing to actually see the wild beach. However, we didn't see any of the Wild Horses. They must have been elsewhere in the reserve.

In order to keep the horses in the reserve and away from the housing developments and highway traffic, the state has installed large fences that go right out into the ocean:

On the way back to the truck, we stopped to take a walk on a 1/3-mile boardwalk that leads to a view of Currituck Sound. A 1.5-mile primitive trail departs from the boardwalk and heads north through a maritime forest. We took the trail and walked about halfway before turning around and heading back. We saw plenty of evidence of wild horses, having to tiptoe around several large piles of horse apples, but we never did catch a glimpse of the horses. Here is Dave resting on a bench in the middle of the maritime forest.

A mile or so of bicycling brought us back to our truck, and we drove south through 20 miles of touristy beach homes to get to the bridge back across to the mainland across Currituck Sound.  We made it home before dark.

So ends another adventure. Tomorrow we venture forth into the Great Dismal Swap!