Thursday, March 20, 2014

2013: Book #6: Duck - an Outer Banks Village

Hopefully this is my last "look back" into 2013 and will bring me up to date on "things I sort of try to keep track of on my blog".   For the past two years I've set out to read six books/year.  I honestly do love to read and six sounds like such a pathetic number, but I seem to get sidetracked usually with other interests and six has become an attainable goal.

So for my last book of 2013 I choose an historical account of the little town in North Carolina where we like to vacation.  Duck - An Outer Banks Village by Judith D. Mercier.  This area grew from a small duck hunting location with a few local people and hunting clubs to a popular vacation spot in the 1980s (1980 seems like yesterday to me, but apparently it is now "history" and items from 1980 , being 25+ years old are vintage!!).  It is just north of the more frequented towns of Kitty Hawk (site of the Wright Brothers first flight) and Nags Head.  The barrier island is narrow at Duck with the main road, Route 12, running close to the Currituck sound side and about a mile from the Atlantic ocean.  We like it because it is much quieter and less commercial than Nags Head and their beach is 100% dog friendly.  Dogs can be off lead as long as you have verbal control of them.  This allows Seamus to frolic in the surf to his heart's content and roll in all those "yummy" smells in the sand. (I don't want to think about what created those great smells.)

I really feel like I have a better appreciation of the history of the place now.  It was much more isolated and quiet before all of us tourists found it.  I feel a bit sad for the people who enjoyed being away from everything.  But, I'm sure many, many people made a killing on real estate when the area started to become developed.  And the duck hunting was starting to become constrained by laws to protect the species from become hunted out about the time as tourism increased.  So the tourist trade has both hurt and helped this little area.

Wrapping up 2013- book reading goal: met!  On to 2014.

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