On the road again…destination: Outer Banks, specifically Ocracoke Island, pronounced oh-kruh-khok. The drive is certainly one of a kind, with plenty of eye candy. I don’t mean men, but lots of interesting things to look at. Not being from South Carolina, I had a lot of, “Hmm, you don’t see that everyday” moments. Par example: The largest hammock, which we found at Nag’s Hammock store in Point Harbor, sand dunes that were inches away from taking over the highway, multilevel homes with porches that wrapped almost around the whole house for every floor on stilts striving for that non-impaired view of the ocean, a flying saucer home and plenty of fresh produce along the way from local farmers.
Passing through little town, after little town, we couldn’t help but feel like such outsiders with our eyes growing over what is to the local, just the way things are, such as a drive through liquor and cigarette store or a restaurant bathroom with a curtain for a door.
We just make it for the ferry ride to Ocracoke, and it’s a beautiful sail into the sunset. Beer in hand with our dog in the other loosing fur due to her fear of the ocean, it was a romantic time with the breeze in our hair pushing some of it in my mouth. I will never be that woman with her hair literally flowing in the wind, but will always be the one with it stuck on my gloss and on my tongue, yum!
Just a 10 minute drive into the hotel district, was to our surprise the entire island. I have to say when I Google mapped it, I was under the impression that there was quite a ways from one point of the island to the other, but it was literally a sneeze. Our accommodations, from the exterior looked like the most descent place to sleep, but so goes the cardinal rule, never judge the book by its cover. With it looking like a pretty busy night on the island, quite surprising for midweek, we were completely ripped off for a rate, hello it’s September! That was just the beginning, the room was atrocious, with pink faux marble countertops, a stench that would make your grandmother’s moth ball filled attic smell like the Body Shop, and to top it off, windows that did not open. The only thing that would save us tonight would be our scented candles that were lit as the first order of business.
Since the sun was now completely down, and the moon as the only exterior light on, we knew that if we wanted dinner we didn’t have much time to do so. Being on an island, I of course wanted oysters, and he wanted crab. The place which claimed to have the freshest seafood on the island was already closing up. It was eight o’clock and the servers were already counting their tips. The next place to go was three quarters of a mile away, but with two glasses of sauvignon blanc in hand, it was far enough to allow us to finish them.
The restaurant that was seeme
d to be poppin’ with a parking lot full of cars was Howard’s Seafood and Raw Bar. It was a casual resto with wooden booths and a screened in porch with license plates from all over the United States as their wall feature. We of course ordered the oysters which were very local, judging by their freshness, size and barnacles still intact. The crab legs, which were just Alaskan snow crab, and not king. The piece de resistance was supposed to be the Hawaiian grilled mahi with green beans and rice, but that was like chewing on a dish rag, the rice tasted like it was reheated over and over again (and I know rice, I’m Asian), the best thing on that plate were the green beans, and those were most likely frozen. It was like a gong show on a platter. The wine was great! But that was probably because we had a head start three quarters of a mile before.
d to be poppin’ with a parking lot full of cars was Howard’s Seafood and Raw Bar. It was a casual resto with wooden booths and a screened in porch with license plates from all over the United States as their wall feature. We of course ordered the oysters which were very local, judging by their freshness, size and barnacles still intact. The crab legs, which were just Alaskan snow crab, and not king. The piece de resistance was supposed to be the Hawaiian grilled mahi with green beans and rice, but that was like chewing on a dish rag, the rice tasted like it was reheated over and over again (and I know rice, I’m Asian), the best thing on that plate were the green beans, and those were most likely frozen. It was like a gong show on a platter. The wine was great! But that was probably because we had a head start three quarters of a mile before.We were not looking forward to the 30 minute walk back, but the half bottle of wine that we took to go helped a bit. It was very dark and desolate with the occasional bike rider that went by, but this was island living, up early and down early, with the sound of sea gulls and crashing waves, boats bobbing in the harbor and air of hard working souls at rest.
