The Outer Banks (OBX) of North Carolina is a really pleasant place. It’s quiet; the food’s great; it’s great for family. But what if the family gets restless? You’ve done the mini-golf and the movies. What might be new, different and fun, and take advantage of the fact that you are where you are?
Try this one: kayak. I went kayaking with my college-age daughter in the Alligator River National Wildlife Reserve this summer, and it was a fabulous change-of-pace. Keep this in mind: we are not an outdoorsy family; we had never kayaked before; and my daughter is not exactly Nature Girl. However, all the key ingredients are there. It is easy. It is not particularly expensive. It is interesting. It is fun. It is relaxing.
We began with a call to one of the outfitters in the Outer Banks. We paid in advance over the phone. The next morning we met the truck towing the kayaks at a centrally-located Walgreens (Mile Post 9) and proceeded on the 40 minute drive to where the kayaks go in. There are other choices as far as location. There is kayaking on the Currituck Sound, for example. There is a sunset kayaking excursion. I chose the one I did because it was guaranteed to be calm water – no chop – AND I wanted to be in a quiet and isolated place.
We surely were. A few strokes into the reserve and there were only the sounds of the forest and the paddles.
Our guide, Rod, himself a product of North Carolina, having lived everywhere from Cashiers to Wilmington, had everyone give themselves an animal name that began with the same letter as their own – a nice little name game. So we had Jaguar (Julia), Red Wolf (Rod), Aardvark (Annie), koala (Kerry), and Bobcat (who else? Bob). Our expedition consisted of two novice families.
It was very quiet, and therefore easy for Rod to tell us about the nearby defunct town, the moonshiners who used to run whisky through this formerly-dry territory, the peat fires that periodically burn in the reserve, and the old railway line that was still evident in some parts of the reserve. There was a little politics in the lesson, but only the neutral instructive kind.
Much of the kayak route was in open water, but the second half of the adventure was through a narrow channel in the swamp. In some places, kayaks would get stuck, but every one of us novices was able to extricate ourselves from these situations and move on.
The expedition took three hours. But you wouldn’t know it, it was pleasant exercise. My daughter had to take a nap later, but other than that, no problem.
It’s not that there aren’t some…issues. Our guide told of some days when the deer flies were so bad that he refused to go out. But even in a place where the heat can be oppressive, this was shaded, or had a nice breeze over the open lakes.
Oh, about the alligators. They are there, but we didn’t see any. There is other wildlife, but we didn’t see any. There was an interesting sign on the way in. It said that tonight’s howling was canceled. There is a transplanted population of red wolves in the reserve, and you can get nighttime excursions to howl with the wolves. That would be different, don’t you think?
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