Visiting Ocracoke

Once we got on Ocracoke Island, we had to drive 14 miles to Ocracoke Village. Since I generally don't eat breakfast and it was approaching 2 pm, I was a little on the hungry side and getting cranky. Parking is very difficult there, since all the tourists congregate around the restaurants. Fortunately, we found Captain Ben's Restaurant, which had parking in the back. Once I had a menu in my hands, I cheered up a little, although I had a hard time deciding between the crab cake sandwich and the lump crab plater. The friendly waitress said that both were heavenly, but the deluxe crab cake was a better deal. I decided to go with that. I devoured the crab cake sandwich in no time. The cole slaw was good, even though it was mayonaise based. Dad even thought so, which was really amazing. The fries were good, too. I just read on an Ocracoke realty site that the restaurant is for the sale, for a mere $1, 800, 000. You can see on that site just how expensive all the properties are on Ocracoke. One cool thing is that the Winston Salem ham's family and the family parked to the left of us on the ferry ended up eating lunch at the same restaurant. Believe me, there are quite a few restaurants there, so that's quite a coincidence.

Afterwards, my dad and I decided to go back to the dock area for a while. We'd spent a good deal of time there when we last visited the Outer Banks, four years ago. I took several pictures and wandered around until it was just too hot to stay out there any longer.

We decided to look for the lighthouse next, since I hadn't been there before, and it didn't look as if there would be any chance that we could park near it. We drove around and got a good view of it from one of the small streets nearby.

Four years ago, we had gone to a wonderful candy store that was filled with all kinds of goodies. It didn't look as if it were where we remembered it, so we figured it must have gone out of business. Not too long after that, I noticed a sign along the side of the road saying that The Sweet Tooth had moved to a new location across from the gas station. Sure enough, we found it. We weren't sure until we got inside and asked someone if it were the same place that it was the one we remembered. The lady who was filling our fudge order told us that they had rented the old location and the owner was actually able to buy the new one. We got quite a bit of candy: 1/2 a pound of chocolate covered orange peel, 3/4 of a pound of fudge (chocolate, chocolate pecan and chocolate mint), old fashioned candies (Mary Janes, Bit-O-Honeys, Sugar Daddies, gummy fruit slices, sesame candies and smarties), maple candy, dark chocolate nonpareils, and gummy sour cherries. That was all only $23. Wow! They certainly aren't gouging the tourists there.
I also got a root beer float, which was very nice. I really like the picture I took with my phone there, too.

When we left the candy store, we were in a hurry to get back to the ferry, because we heard that that the ferries only operated until 7pm and it was already close to 5pm. We didn't want to be stuck on the island, in case it took as long to get back as it did to get there.