What a strange place for a state highway...

I have to admit...this was our first trip to the Outer Banks and we really didn't know where to go and what were the fun things to do.  So we thumbed through a AAA tour book and came up with some things.  We also asked some people who had gone there before what they enjoyed and what they would pass on if they were to go again.

One of the attractions that came up several times in conversations with seasoned veterans was the trip up Route 12.  OK.  I just drove several hundred miles and now they wanted me to take a ride up some stupid old state route?  Probably a curvy, two-laned thing.  They said we would get to see Duck and wild horses.  OK, ducks and wild horses.  What was the big deal with that.

As it turns out, Duck is the name of a really cool town...ritzy, but nice.  And the wild horses are truly wild, they roam freely throughout the dunes area, are protected by law and date back to the Spanish explorers who came to that area.  That was the big deal with those two things, and I'll write about them later.  But the trip up Route 12 (Ocean Trail) was fun.  We read all the warnings about driving anything other than a heavy duty 4-wheel-drive Jeep out there.  The road went through the town of Duck and through a gate and onto the beach.  In fact, it was sand dunes pretty much all the way up to Virginia.  People lived out there and had to drive this sand beach road any time they wanted to go to town, go to the grocery store or, as often was the case, to evacuate the area due to storms.I bet this was pretty tricky at times.  The sand was pretty deep and soft in lots of places and cars would tent to bottom out and get stuck quite a bit.  Our understanding from those who have been there before is that it can cost up to $400 to get pulled out by the tow truck guys who are parked all along the route, sipping a cool one or working on their tans while they wait for tourists to get bogged down.  The two pictures shown above give you an idea of what the road looked like at the beginning, just as you come through the gate that marks the edge of the town of Duck.  It didn't look too bad -- real hard sand.  That quickly changed.

Another thing that stood out when you started down Route 12 -- the fence marking the end of the sand portion of Route 12, which also served as the end of the wildlife preserve, ran out a long ways into the ocean.  That was to keep the wild horses from getting out of their area and into the civilized world.

Even though I have a Jeep (a Grand Cherokee, not a Wrangler) , I was not going to drive it out in the sand dunes.  I used to do that in the Army and remember getting a lot of sand in the universal joint areas as well as the brakes and wheel joints.  Enough of that and you can really screw up your vehicle.

These kinds of Jeeps were made for this kind of "on-roading."  This particular day was a beautiful, sun-filled, slightly breezy chamber of commerce afternoon.  These vehicles are technically parked in the median.  To their front is the beach and the road is to the rear.  It is like this practically every foot of the way to Virginia.

Imagine driving down a road with this view out the front, and the sides.  This really is a two-lane road, but it's anyone's guess as to where the lanes are.  Rule of the road -- just keep it off the grassy banks and out of the deep water.

Oh, yeah, so how did we get down this road?  We were on a tour, heading down to see the wild horses.  The vehicle we were on was a kinda African safari-looking thing.  A couple of times the driver hit some sand ruts and nearly threw everyone out of the back end of the vehicle.  Kinda reminded me of being bounced around in the back of a "deuce-and-a-half" back in the early days of the Army.

Wonder what kind of maintenance they have to do on that road, if any.  Wonder how much different this road is at night --  in the really, really dark.  This is not a Sunday afternoon drive -- this is more like a commitment.

Just because someone isn't on the same road as you doesn't mean he is lost.
Hooah

Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/hjacksonb101503.html?src=t_road

Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/hjacksonb101503.html?src=t_road