Fri May 21

We slept in a little bit and started our planned trek down to Ocracoke Island. The ferry took a while - 2 hour wait since we arrived just after noon, and then 1 hour to cross. We relaxed in the car with our books and just waited it out. Once on the island we saw the formerly wild ponies in their pen and visited the lighthouse so we could check it off our list. Had a much shorter wait for the return ferry. I walked back to a wetland to take pictures of the white birds we saw on the way in. There I saw a strange brown bird - that turned out to be a raccoon foraging in the water. Saw more new birds on the way back then stopped for dinner at a great restaurant in Buxton. (Diamond Shoals, if you're in the area.) As we drove up the banks the sun set, but wasn't all that colorful. We saw that the Bodie Lighthouse was working so I tried to get a photo of that with some sky color, but there wasn't much left.