Outer Banks Day 3

Day 3: Monday April 11, 2010

Another beautiful day. We decided to go to Roanoke Island to visit Fort “Raleigh, the lost village, the Elizabethan Gardens, Manteo Heritage Park and walk around the town.

We arrived at Fort Raleigh and Lost Village area which is a National Park and started to walk the paths. We were not told that a lot of construction was going on and most of the area was blocked. It did not take us long to walk through the area. There was nothing to see or take pictures of.


We then went to the Elizabethan Gardens which is not part off the National Park. If you like English gardens with many flowering shrubs and trees, you will love the gardens. It is almost 100% wooden area with beautiful sculptures placed throughout the gardens. The trees were in bloom, but a lot of the flowers were not.




We left the gardens and went into Manteo for lunch. We went to a diner called Big Al’s which was built in the 50’s and looks like it has never been upgraded. It was well maintained and the food was very good. They had a lunch buffet and we decided to take it since we could try a lot of the things they had on their menus.

After lunch went to the Heritage Park which is a museum and park that is dedicated to the early settling of Roanoke Island. They had displays on the early Indians which showed how they lived, canoes, utensils and information on early farming. One of their displays was a camp that showed how the early settlers lived before they built permanent quarters. All were interesting.

A lot of the displays in the museum were interactive so the children who visited could use the items. There was a 45 minute movie about the early Indians that we watched. It was ok, but I would not cut the museum portion short to see the movie.

We drove back into town and took a stroll along the Broadway that goes around the city. There was a light house mounted on top of one of the buildings in the dock area. We also stopped by a marine museum. It was closed so we only got to see what was outside and what we could see through the windows. We then continued our tour of the town. Some of the restaurants and shops were closed. I guess it is too early for them to open. We did find an interesting antique store to visit. Their prices were very reasonable, but we did not find anything that we wanted.


We drove back to Seascape and took a walk up to their club house for a beer. It was a slow day for them and there were only 2 people in the bar. We both had a draft Belgium white beer which was good and reasonably priced. I suppose we will go back for another beer.

We went back to the room and watched a move of Patricia Cornwell’s At Risk. Linda popped popcorn and that was dinner for us. The movie was great .