{"id":1451,"date":"2008-05-20T21:06:40","date_gmt":"2008-05-21T02:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/?p=1451"},"modified":"2008-05-20T21:06:40","modified_gmt":"2008-05-21T02:06:40","slug":"farewell-obx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/?p=1451","title":{"rendered":"Farewell, OBX"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ll be leaving the Outer Banks tomorrow. \u00a0 I have a pretty satisfied feeling about our visit here. \u00a0 We ended up spending eight nights, which gave us time to see a lot of the area, and yet we’ve left a lot of exploration for the next time. \u00a0 Most of the people I’ve talked to about the Outer Banks tell me they come again and again, and never seem to get tired of it. \u00a0 So we can look forward to another visit someday.<\/p>\n

\"obx-flower.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Almost definitely we will camp in the National Seashore again, and we will also be likely to come in the ‘shoulder season’ before Memorial Day or after Labor Day. \u00a0 The mosquitoes began to arrive with the humidity yesterday, which convinced us that we don’t want to be here with either of those things if we can avoid them.<\/p>\n

The Outer Banks have also been good for our budget. \u00a0 Our eight nights at the seashore cost us a grand total of $160, or about the cost of one night in a local inn. This is one of the reasons why most full-timers come to realize that being “on the road” is cheaper than staying home. \u00a0 With some courtesy parking next week, and a few inexpensive state and national park campsites, we should be able to offset higher fuel costs and continue to save money.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, I keep running into surveys<\/a> and other indications that RV owners are not shying away from travel this summer. \u00a0 State parks seem to be as busy as ever. \u00a0 \u00a0 People I talk to say they are going shorter distances, and in some cases, driving more slowly, but they aren’t staying home. \u00a0 It’s still a lot cheaper for a family of three or more to travel by RV for their vacation than to fly and get a hotel, as long as they aren’t going thousands of miles.<\/p>\n

We would have continued on today but for two reasons. \u00a0 The weather \u00a0 forecast indicated a strong likelihood of thunderstorms during the day along our route of travel, and I had a lot of work to do. \u00a0 We took the day to get caught up, which included Eleanor doing heaps of laundry up in Manteo. Now we are ready to hit the road on Wednesday, and complete the final twelve days of this phase of our travel with clean clothes, sheets, and towels.<\/p>\n

As I write this, thunderstorms are rumbling overhead and huge bolts of lightning are striking nearby. \u00a0 We’ve often talked about what thunderstorms mean to us, in the Airstream. \u00a0 Mostly our concerns are tornadoes and hail, both of which are spawned from severe thunderstorms. \u00a0 The current thunderstorms are producing neither, which means we can relax and watch the light show. \u00a0 If a bolt of lightning were to strike the trailer, we would be well protected by the “skin effect<\/a>,” which causes the energy to travel on the outside of the metal shell down to the ground. \u00a0 Because of its aluminum construction, an Airstream is an excellent lightning shelter, much safer than many other structures<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So mild thunderstorms like we are having at the moment are no big deal. \u00a0 We don’t even have to worry about power outages. It’s a nice change from last week when we were wondering if the trailer was going to fly to Oz without us.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow these storms will be only a memory, and we’ll hitch up for points north. \u00a0 In the next twelve days we have six stops planned, so we’ll be hopping most of the time. \u00a0 A lot of details are still unresolved, but that’s part of the fun of it, isn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ll be leaving the Outer Banks tomorrow. \u00a0 I have a pretty satisfied feeling about our visit here. \u00a0 We ended up spending eight nights, which gave us time to see a lot of the area, and yet we’ve left a lot of exploration for the next time. \u00a0 Most of the people I’ve talked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}