Jockey's Ridge State Park is about a half hour south of Corolla and every visit I make to the Outer Banks includes a trip to this place. The entire park is sort of a gigantic abstract. These are the largest dunes in the United States, east of the Mississippi River. The park is adjacent to the national monument where the Wright Brothers made their first flight off of the dunes in Kitty Hawk. The dunes sit between the ocean and the bay. Hiking down to the bay over the dunes gives you an entirely different ecology to appreciate. There is beauty in every direction, including a woods of pine trees.
I first made a trip to the dunes during a vacation with Pauline and my mother. I went on my own to scope out the place one morning and was so blown away by the beauty. I wanted to share the experience with Pauline and my mom, but knew there was no way they could get beyond the observation deck. I arranged with the park rangers to have them driven around the park in a dune buggy. I made the appointment and we showed up the next day. He drove them all over the park. It was spectacular.
The last time I had been to the park with Pauline, it was just days after a hurricane had hit the area. The low lying areas that were ordinarily covered in sand and plants were covered in very large ponds of water.
If you would like to see some of the photographs from that visit, this is the link to that album on my Flickr account:
The water had only been there for a few days. The most amazing occurrence for me was that in such a short time, aquatic plants and wildlife were already finding their way into this new ecosystem. It was just astounding to me how all of this wildlife so quickly found its way to this new environment and just how rapidly they were adapting. On the trip Nancy I made to the park, none of this water remained. We made two visits to the park during our week in Corolla. Hiking around the park is great exercise and across each of the dunes it is spectacularly beautiful.
These are the images from the bay side of the park. Once hiking down off of the dunes towards the bay, the scenery changes dramatically. The ocean grasses are beautiful, and I was back to the abstracts.
Very nice, Sandy - keep up the great work . . .