47.3 mi / 11.4 mph / 212 ft. climbing
Home: Oyster Point Campground

It was 66 degrees when we got out of the tent, a degree warmer than last night! Coastal weather is weird, man. They say mosquitoes are worst at dusk and dawn, and they seem to really follow that rule here: bad enough to make Rett barricade herself inside the tent for breakfast, but essentially gone once the sun had fully shown its face.

Cedar Island is part of “Down East” North Carolina (not to be confused with the region of Maine with the same name!), and it’s essentially the end point of a 32-mile-long dead end road. Only the thrice-a-day ferry connects it to points further, the ferry that had dropped us at this dead end last night, and today we roll inland to see if we can find life. The remoteness of this Carolina peninsula, and its slow fade into the water, means that glimpses we catch of the culture here feel deeply “country”, and the world of the Outer Banks portrayed in Rett’s Netflix show is closer to this place than the actual Outer Banks.

After several miles of solid land, we emerged into the vast open marsh, an environment I remembered vividly from my ride through in 2010. Our road of asphalt was the minority in this endless grassland where all the rest were made of water. Unfortunately the day’s mild headwinds became less-mild whenever we entered unsheltered spaces like this, so we got to spend a bit more time “enjoying” the unique landscape than we would have preferred.

A Dollar Tree and the first real intersection marked the beginning of our return to civilization. In Smyrna we stocked up at the small grocery store, got sandwiches (and gas) from the gas station across the street, and just set up our chairs right where our bikes were parked in front of the store to eat lunch.

Ok, it still wasn’t very civilized, since neither the grocery store nor gas station had toilets, and that meant the next bit of riding was a tough period where we both needed to pee, but for miles couldn’t find any place to do so, and also had some pretty stressful traffic to deal with on top of it. The good news is that those “distractions” made the miles tick off faster than they would have under less pressure. Large collections of political signs (particularly from competing parties) are good indications of non-private land, but we didn’t pass any that also had any privacy foliage. Finally a sad dilapidated park appeared, with a plant-overgrown ruined building in the center, and that’s where we achieved our relief.

When the morning was warmer than the previous evening, I guess I can’t call it a surprise that the afternoon was fairly-sweltering, but I had not been expecting to see the sweat glistening on my arms all day in November, and I certainly didn’t expect that we would need to duplicate the dive into a gas station’s walk-in beer cooler that Dennis and I had done in September of 2010 (and ok, it still wasn’t the 90-degree temperatures we faced then).

A few miles from the end of our hot day of fighting headwinds, we were dismayed to see that a “road closed” sign for once actually referred to a road we needed to take. An 8-mile detour (mostly on gravel) would be brutal at this point, so we desperately hoped that we would somehow be able to make it through the closure. Luckily the work was happening right at the turnoff, so at least we wouldn’t burn even more miles just trying to get a yes/no answer. Unluckily, it was an active work zone (we prefer “sneaking through” when no one is there to tell us we can’t), but at least that gave us someone to talk to.

And in a stroke of luck we don’t even deserve, one of the workers was friendly, interested, and glad to help. All we had to do is wait a few minutes for them to finish up for the day. “These guys rode all the way from Seattle!!”, he shouted up to the guy in the cab of the digger, and I’m not sure if it was just amazement he wanted to share, or a way of convincing his coworkers that they should help us out. Maybe both?

The roadway was completely cut through with a big ditch, but there was a rough muddy path that only went halfway into the ditch that he was sure we’d be able to get across. I was less convinced, and as we started pushing the bikes, I stalled and determined that we should take all of our bags off first. “Nah,” our new friend says, grabbing my rear rack, kicking my indecision into the pit, and waving another guy over to grab the front. I thought this was a terrible idea, since most people severely underestimate the weight of our loaded bikes. But it turns out I severely underestimated the strength of construction workers! Both Rett and I were flabbergasted by the ease at which they lifted each of our bikes and marched them through the mud and safe to the other side within seconds. We were thrilled that they even let us through at all, and had zero expectation that they would personally execute the crossing (and then they barely even accepted our profuse thanks).

As a final bonus, we were now on the other side of a closed road, so 2/3rds of the traffic that passed us over the next four miles were the workers who had been parked on that side, giving supportive beeps as they headed home.

To get to the National Forest campground, we had a mile of gravel to ride, and I was glad to find that it was solid and smooth (if slightly-rocky). Given how much sand we have seen in this region, I was concerned that “gravel” could mean “sand”, but here in the forest it seems like most of the ground is much harder-packed.

Our campsite was huge and beautiful, mixing the sparse tall forest of this region with a water backdrop. The only downside was that the campground only has vault toilets and no showers. A few weeks ago in New England this wouldn’t have been too big of a deal, but we both had a solid coating of scum after today’s ride. Luckily our site had three(!) lantern hooks, making it easy to hoist our water bladder high enough to use it to take a reasonably-effective shower.

We threw together an excellent Southern dinner of canned collard greens, along with homemade pulled pork, baked beans, loaded potato salad, and broccolini salad all made by the women at the Smyrna grocery store. Our day in the rural south closed with whistles, cheers, and the glow of Friday Night Lights floating across the river to us from West Carteret High School (where they were playing Croatan, named for the same Native American tribe as our National Forest).