Day 5: To Beaufort, NC

Before we turned out the lights in the Teardrop last night and closed our eyes for sleep, I expressed concern for the kids, trying to sleep in a thrashing tent as the wind kicked up. "Don't worry about them. They'll be fine," Keith said, before he turned over and promptly dozed off.

Keith, it seems, it not afflicted with maternal guilt. He is also blessed with one deaf ear and the ability to tune out surrounding noise if he turns on his side and buries his good ear in the pillow. "Bad Ear Up," we call it. So, Keith slept well last night, but my sleep was unsettled, as I tossed and turned and listened to the flap, flap, flapping of the tent in the wind and wondered how the kids could possibly sleep through that.

I was also bothered by the sound of a constant pinging -- a noise that had kept me awake our first night here, as well. Yesterday, I had zeroed in on its source: The little posts marking each campsite have a clip that the park rangers use to mark the status of the site -- reserved, occupied, unoccupied. In the strong wind, the little clips knock against the metal posts. Ping ping ping ping ping pingpingpingpingping. As I fretted about the kids, I also began to fixate on that noise, and it agitated me so much that I eventually got out of bed, grabbed a roll of medical tape from our first-aid kit, and went on a stealth mission through the moonlit campground to tape down the metal clips on every post within a stone's throw of our trailer. Success!

I awoke at daybreak, still stressed about the flapping tent. I made a bathroom run, and noted that many of the other tents in the campground were buckling worse than ours, and that the occupants were also awake and were starting to break down camp. I don't think anyone slept well last night.



Except, of course, our kids. They slept fine.. They are troopers, and perhaps (hopefully) inherited Keith's ability to drown out distracting noise. We woke them up at 7, and amazingly, were able to break everything down and get everything packed up so we could be on the road by 8:30, which is, perhaps, a record for us.

Not too far down the road, we pulled over at a Dunkin' Donuts for food and wifi. Clare, bless her heart, refuses to eat doughnuts, so we fed her Fig Newtons for breakfast. Parenting win or parenting fail? You decide.

A 15-minute stop for doughnuts turned into a 90-minute hot mess as I attempted to post the first installment of the blog, but couldn't remember the password. Blogspot emailed instructions for resetting the password to our home email account, but we couldn't remember the remote-access password for that account, either, and I was nearly in tears as I felt so close and yet so far away. First world problems, I know. Clearly, we eventually figured it all out. Clare, with her steel-trap memory, has been entrusted with all passwords from now on.

So, our destination today was Beaufort, NC, and Cape Lookout National Seashore, which is just south of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. From Ocracoke, where we ate dinner the other night, you could probably throw a rock and hit Cape Lookout. But if you want to take your car and your Teardrop trailer there, you have to drive about a hundred miles inland, then loop around to the south and east. We rolled in to Beaufort, a picturesque harborside town -- and the third oldest town in North Carolina -- at 2 p.m. sharp, which happens to be the exact start time for a festive hometown parade honoring the girls' high school soccer team, which recently lost the state championship game 2 to 1 in double penalty shootouts. I think every fire engine in the tri-county area rolled down the main street, lights flashing, sirens blaring. And somehow our van and its little Teardrop were directed by police officers right into the tail-end of the parade, and as we cruised down main street, throngs of jubilant onlookers waved, cheered and snapped photographs. And when we pulled into the marina parking lot, we were swarmed by admirers, all gawking at the trailer.

One of the onlookers asked us where we're from. Small world! It turns out that he is from West Lafayette -- Jeff Green, a 1987 graduate of Harrison H.S. (Anybody know him?) He's been working the docks here in Beaufort, he says, for about four years. He said his dad used to head up St. E hospital.

As we had pulled into town, we got a phone call from the operators of Outer Banks Houseboats, urging us to hustle because the boat was hogging space at the fuel docks and they needed to move it soon. So, with the precision of a finely tuned machine, in just a few minutes, while the van and trailer were double-parked and crowds of on-lookers stopped to ask questions, Keith and I sorted through everything in the van, the car-top carrier, the Teardrop and the galley, pulling camp chairs, beach toys, sleeping bags, towels, food, flashlights, clothing, games, Band-Aids, sunscreen, bug spray and more from the different compartments where they had been stashed for the monthlong journey, and the kids hauled it all down the dock to the boat.

The downtown area was packed with parade-goers, and there was not a parking spot to be found -- nevermind a space for a van and a trailer. Amid the bustle surrounding our car, Keith and I wondered just what to do with our vehicles for three days when one gentleman stepped forward and offered us his driveway, four blocks away. Not seeing any other options, Keith and I reluctantly accepted his offer. On his bicycle, this guy, Craig, led Keith through the crowded streets to his home, where he introduced himself as a sculptor, brought Keith into his livingroom/workshop, and showed off a small wooden sculpture of a Teardrop trailer on the wall. Craig then revealed to Keith that he would create a model of our trailer and have it ready for us on our return. "Wow," Keith said, I think at a loss for any other words. Keith offered to pay him for using his driveway for a few days, but Craig refused, saying that the privilege of having an actual Teardrop parked in front of his house was payment enough.

Back on the boat, we met Captain Manly, who gave us a quick run-down of the power systems on the boat, and then piloted us, oh, 50 yards into the harbor where we are anchored for the night. Keith and I were all, "This is it?"  We had expected an hours-long excursion to the isolated Outer Banks, where we would see no other humans for three days. From here, I can still smell the sickening mix of fish, cigarette smoke and ketchup from the restaurants on the boardwalk. We're told that the north wind makes the water beyond the harbor a little too choppy -- not great conditions for a houseboat. The wind should shift by tomorrow, and Capt. Manly will return to take us farther out.

Before he left us, Manly tied a skiff to the side of the houseboat, so that we can motor ourselves to the beach on the other side of the harbor (which is, in truth, about 25 feet away from where we're anchored), or to the town dock for dinner. The captain flew through a set of instructions on how to start it, steer it, raise the trim, set the anchors in the stern and the bow, and a bunch of other stuff that Keith and I have absolutely no idea about, and then left us alone. Here. In the middle of the harbor. Then Keith turned to me and asked, "So, which end is the stern?" I don't think we're going anywhere in that skiff tonight.