Weekend in Manteo

Our first weekend in Manteo was one chock-full of things to do!  And we tried to do as many of them as we could.  We started the day with walking to the Manteo farmers market.  Set up right on the water, we perused local crafts, produce, and other edibles.  I got some delicious shiitake mushrooms, a gorgeous tomato, a ginger peach popsicle, and this gorgeous mug.

I love the dark colors with the turquoise!  It also has dolphins on it.

Next we returned home to attend the Pea Island "Crab Rodeo."  Pea Island is a national wildlife refuge, and crabbing is prohibited all year... except for one Saturday in June from 9-noon.  Our whole group caught eight crabs in just one hour on our chicken-neck lures.  It was pretty fun, but our catch very quickly died (it was pretty tragic), so we didn't actually get to enjoy any crab that night...

And I caught the first one!!

Next some of us went to the Kite Festival at Jockey's Ridge State Park.  Just driving up, we could see so many kites up in the sky, and really cool ones too!  There were scuba divers, crazy spinning kites, squid, long kites, and my favorite was the HUGE whale and baby whale!

Look at that whale kite compared to the teeny people!

Besides being filled with kites, Jockey's Ridge is the largest dune on the Atlantic Coast.  As soon as we reached the end of the boardwalk and stepped on to the sand, I felt like I was in the middle of an expansive desert, even though there was a highway right on the other side of the dune!  The crazy thing is that it is always changing shape, moving with the wind.

One of the kite pros.

We came home after a surprisingly fortunate (meaning both delicious and affordable) lunch find at the Blue Moon Cafe.  That evening we tried to walk to a brewery we had spotted near the farmers market that morning, but it was closed by the time we got there.  We wandered into a bar with live music that was right across the street, and listened to a two-man-band called "Pairadocs" (they are both chiropractors... heh) which turned out to be a very fun evening.  Meanwhile Terry and Will, some of my co-interns, befriended a man who does sailboat cruises, and actually scored all of us a free two-hour sunset cruise the next night.  I KNOW RIGHT!!  The cruise was beautiful.  It reminded me a lot of home on the Patuxent River.  But before the sun set, it disappeared behind the thick smoke layer on the horizon...