Days 73-75: March 31-April 2, 2023

Our final stop in the OBX (Outer Banks) was Manteo, a small town on Roanoke Island. We headed out for the day’s trip with a beautiful sunrise. The transit from Ocracoke to Manteo had some narrow channels and the entrance to Manteo basically required a hard ninety degree turn to get in but we navigated successfully and docked up at the Shallow Bag Bay Marina.

Festival Park

The town of Manteo is a nice tourist area. It has a small downtown area with shops and restaurants. Next to downtown they have the Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse. It shows a great example of the historic lighthouses of the area. Also close to downtown is Festival Park. The park sports the Adventure Museum, an American Indian town, and a full-size reproduction of the Elizabeth II sailing ship. They tell the experience of what it would have been like for the early English explorers. The museum was pretty neat and showed a lot about the travels and adventures of the explorers. It also told the story of the missing Roanoke settlers—the ones that were to be left for a few months and were actually left for a couple years. What happened to those settlers is still a mystery today.

The ship was very cool to see. I don’t know how 50 people lived on a ship of that size crossing the Atlantic. We have enough angst just going out in the Atlantic up the coast for a few hours.

Axe Throwing

We found out that close by was a trampoline park that had an axe throwing range. After Michael was done bouncing off the walls, we tried throwing a few. It was a bit tricky getting the timing and distance figured out though after a while we got the hang of it.

The Christmas Shop

On one of the afternoons, Tonia and I walked about. During that walk we passed the Christmas Shop, we saw many interesting things in the window, from a whole two-story window of wind chimes and another window with a creepy doll peering out. We decided that we’d need to visit the next day when it opened.

We recruited Mayli and Barbara to join us, and we headed to the store the next morning. The shop has been open for over 50 years and during that time they kept expanding with new rooms and areas. There was so much to see. My favorite was the Bob Ross ornaments! Tonia was partial to Who-ville.

The Christmas Shop had pretty much any kind of ornament you could every think of and much, much more. While shopping the General Store area with lots of food stuffs and candies, we hit up the wine section where they were doing free tastings and, well, couldn’t pass that up. Found a cool mini keg on the sale rack that passed muster.

There was even a Halloween section, where we found the creepy doll window from above spotted the day before. It sported many scary items and was fun, except Tonia said she’d have nightmares. We did think of a couple friends (Jamee and Paula) that would have really enjoyed this part though.

Elizabethan Gardens

The girls did a thing at the place! Okay…time for Tonia to chime in here…

Mayli really wanted to check out the gardens at the north end of the island. The kids and guys were less keen so she grabbed Tonia and Barbara to check it out. While it was still early in the season for some blooms, it was still quite pretty and a lovely little getaway.

Just outside the gardens was the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site where there was a well-detailed museum and there was also The Lost City theatre.

Day 73 Trip Details (March 31):
Silver Lake Marina, Ocracoke, US to Manteo, US
Time 7 h 48 m (06:34 to 14:22)
Distance: 58.23 nm