Now this isn't something you see everyday ...

Looking back at some of my pictures from the past year, I came across something which, at the time, seemed like a bid deal.  Pam and I had planned a return trip to the Outer Banks, NC this past fall and were really looking forward to it.  Mother Nature, however, had something different in mind.  It seems that earlier in the year, they had that big storm that came up the East Coast associated with the hurricane that really tore things up all along that area.

In response to all the damage to the beach areas, the towns along there (Nag's Head, Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk, etc.) all decided they needed to "renew" the beaches.  Apparently this is a somewhat common, albeit expensive, thing for that area.  But, if you want the tourism dollars, you have to have the beaches.  They also serve as buffers to the waves and high water from storms, kinda sheltering the houses and businesses that are built along shoreline.  So, the work is expensive and time-consuming -- but it is a spectacle for tourists to take in (at least once).

The process involves ships (large dredges) and tugs, rather large floating pipes, and gigantic sand moving graders and earth movers constantly moving up and down the beach.  Sections of the beach are often closed off to tourists for days and weeks at a time, really throwing a monkey wrench into vacation plans, especially if you rented a house on the beach that now has no access to the water right in front of your four- and five-figure retreat.  There are lots of workarounds and other beach access areas, but that's not the point.  The pictures of these ships were taken from the balcony of our hotel room, four floors up and right on the beach.  I was using a telephoto lens, but they do not do justice to the actual size of the operation and the ships.  I would call them "boats" but some of my old Navy friends would be texting me to highlight the difference between a ship and a boat.

 
Anyway, Pam and I found it very fascinating.  Well, at least Pam did as she was on the beach "watching" every day.  It was a little less fascinating to me from the golf course, but they had plenty of "sand" there to contend with and it wasn't nearly as expensive as what they were doing.



I did find some of the equipment fascinating.  There was one tall thing that looked like some sort of "earth walker" from the Star Wars movies.  It would literally roll around on the beach, go out into the ocean (20-30 feet deep or so) and move sand around.  Someone said it was building breakers of some sort out there for waves (I don't know -- could be true). Anyway, they really looked cool.

They finished the section right in front of our hotel, and were in the process of moving to another section of the beach.  In order to do this, they have to "blow" the pipe that was used to move sand and "float it."  I am sure they have way more technical terms for it, but that is what it looked like.  In order to do this, they blow the water and sand out of the pipe back towards the beach.  It was quite a sight -- all I could think of is "there she blows" and out came huge water showers.  Some of these "blow-outs" had to be at least 40-50 high. 

So, all in all, it was really pretty cool to watch, and it really didn't ruin our vacation in any way.   There was plenty to do and besides, there is nothing that can beat a relaxing day just sitting with my wife in lounge chairs, under an umbrella, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean... especially when I look out my window today at the snow coming down (about 4 inches or so today) and the National Weather Service calling for winter weather advisories and wind chills back in the negative numbers.  Oh, well, it's Ohio -- what do you expect.

As I mentioned earlier, once they were finished blowing out the pipes and they were ready to move on to another part of the beach, they had one of the giant earth movers come and lift the pipe up on to some large metal floating object, they then wrapped some very large steel cables around the whole thing and when finished, a tug would pull and the earth mover would push the whole contraption out into the ocean to  be pulled off to their new work site a few miles down the coast. 

This was a several million dollar project and, watching it every day for a week, you could tell that they really knew what they were doing.  The logistics of moving ships into position every day, round the clock, 24-hour dredging operations, performing required maintenance on their equipment and scheduling personnel -- all of this told me that this wasn't their first rodeo.  And to do this according to a schedule that took into account ocean storms and foul weather -- pretty impressive.

Oh, one other thing ... all of this work scared off a lot of people so even with it being the end of the tourist schedule we really had a lot of the place to ourselves.  There was a lot less traffic and the eating places were way less crowded.  It was even easy to get a tee time (Yessssss!).  Needless to say, it won't always be this way.  Hopefully they won't be required to do this all the time, and I know we won't be this lucky on reservations and crowds -- but I am sure we will be back a few more times.  Great place.

The Beach -- the only place I know of where salt (water, air, etc.) actually lowers my blood pressure.

Hooah