Bank on Carolina

RALEIGH, N.C. — A song of the early 1920s that has remained a favorite, with surges in popularity from recordings by such greats as Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin and even Bill Haley and His Comets, put it this way:

If I had Aladdin’s lamp for only a day, I’d make a wish and here’s what I’d say: Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning.

Indeed, North Carolina is a fine place to be in the afternoons and evenings as well.

For a short-haul trip from the Washington area, North Carolina has long been a favorite — especially its Outer Banks. Whalebone, N.C., south of Kill Devil Hill, is 278 miles from Washington, so the Outer Banks is a good place to start a visit.

What we call the Outer Banks received its first known rave reviews in the 1580s after Sir Walter Raleigh sent explorers to check out the sounds and estuaries alongside the area that is now North Carolina’s playground by the sea. The all-male group arrived in 1585 but chose to return to England with Sir Francis Drake in 1586. The men’s reports caused Queen Elizabeth I to commission Raleigh to establish a permanent colony in America two decades before Jamestown and three decades before Plymouth.

The second group arrived in 1587, but by 1590, all had disappeared. Every one of the approximately 120 men, women and children whom Raleigh had sent — he never set foot in North America — had vanished without a trace. Their deserted settlement site showed no signs of any trouble. Conflicting theories about what happened still abound, and the settlement remains the Lost Colony.

Outer Banks visitors can take in a well-done stage production about this mystery — Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Green’s “The Lost Colony,” America’s first and longest-running historical drama performed under the stars. It has drawn large crowds and high praise for 60 years.

The Outer Banks is a string of sandy barrier islands that stretch more than 130 miles along North Carolina’s Atlantic coastline. It’s an area of great natural beauty, with mile after mile of pristine white sandy beaches and shifting sand dunes, inlet water hideaways and wildlife refuge areas, all of which make for great recreational opportunities. Surrounding water frontage exceeds 900 miles. Its estuary system — a mixing place of seawater and fresh water — is one of the largest in the world.

In Nags Head, at 400-acre Jockey’s Ridge State Park, site of the largest natural sand dune system on the Atlantic coast, visitors can go hang gliding and sand boarding, fly kites, hike along nature trails and picnic in an area that in some places looks like a big desert. Sometimes the dunes are taller than 100 feet above the ocean.

It was precisely this combination of tall dunes, good winds and soft sand that led two Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop owners, Wilbur and Orville Wright, to come here to try out their invention. They selected for their most important experiments a spot just south of Kitty Hawk called Big Kill Devil Hill, from which they made more than 1,000 glides.

Here, on Dec. 17, 1903, the two, each wearing suit and tie, flipped a coin, shook hands over the noise of the engine they had built, and with younger brother Orville at the controls and Wilbur running alongside, their machine lifted off the ground at 10:35 in the morning. For the first time, a heavier-than-air machine with a person onboard rose into the air on its own power. That first flight lasted just 12 seconds and traveled just 120 feet, not much more than half the length of a Boeing 747. You can learn all about it at the place where it occurred, at the Wright Brothers National Memorial.

It’s easy to find a nice beach close by this historic spot. There are 85 public-access beaches in this area, and they are among the best on the Atlantic coast. Relax on a beach, take a dip in the ocean, walk on the soft sand, search for shells or go surfing, windsurfing or surf fishing — this is one of the best areas along the entire East Coast for any of these activities. It’s also a great area for other outdoor activities such as golf, kayaking, canoeing and camping.

FISH AND BIRDS

Fishing, both saltwater and freshwater, is outstanding, and you can fish from along the ocean shore, from piers, in the many sounds and aboard offshore charter boats.

This also is one of the best places in the country for bird-watching, home of the 5,834-acre Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is great during the warm months but even better during the cold season, when more than 400 species of waterfowl winter here. You can go on guided or independent nature-trail tours and even sit in a blind to observe birds up close.

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