Names and Places

Chocowinity, Hatteras, Kiptopeke, Chincoteague, Assateague, and last, but not least, Chicamacomico. These are the places we’ve been to along the east coast. I’m sure they are originally native names, and I don’t know the exact interpretation of these words. But I’m pretty sure every one of them means “place of great seafood”, because that’s what we found at each spot. 

No matter what town along this coast we stop in, we can always find a fish market with freshly caught shrimp, scallops, crab, and flounder. We even lucked in to finding one having a “customer appreciation” day that served us a free lunch along with our purchase.

In Virginia the clams and oysters (pronounced “orr-sters” by the locals) were plentiful.

South of Chesapeake Bay, they specialize in blue and soft shelled crabs. In fact, one town put up blue crab statues all around the town because they were just so darned proud of them.

The focus of this trip, besides overeating, seems to be the barrier islands along the U.S. Atlantic. Our first campground in Delaware was on a thin strip of land between the Ocean and Indian River Bay. Hubby rushed right out and got a fishing license so he could surf fish off the beach in high tide, and then fish in the bay when the tide was out.

We were in a similar spot when we camped on the Outer Banks, the barrier islands of North Carolina. 

Hatteras Island is a sliver of land about a hundred kilometers long that protects Pamlico Sound from the unpredictable Atlantic. The entire strip is little more than an overachieving shoal, made entirely of sand. Before the locals finally bolstered the dunes to strengthen the shores, during storms the ocean would wash entirely over the island and into the sound on the other side. 

All the houses are built on stilts, using the underneath as carports and boat storage, even today.

With all these geographical drawbacks, it is hard for me to understand how this was the perfect place for the Wright brothers to attempt flight. But Kitty Hawk, which is on this barrier island, was specifically chosen by those two because of it has no trees, and it is made of flat, ocean washed sand with a steady ocean breeze.


There is a huge monument there to celebrate their success.

And in a fitting tribute, the kiteboarders and sailboarders frolic in those same winds, just off the island on the sound side.

Unfortunately, success hasn’t been the word to use when it comes to my “hunter-gatherer” bringing home the bounties of the sea. It’s not his fault. He certainly tries hard, and I am very glad that he at least enjoys the attempts. But the schedule on this trip is very tight, and between tours and dinners, group meetings and travel days, there hasn’t been a lot of free time to dangle one’s hook. Let’s just say that we are grateful for the many local seafood stores.

The tours we have taken so far have run the gamut from aquariums and bird banding stations, to a NASA flight facility, and we even took in a river cruise. Local history is always a favourite with us, and we did a walking tour of a small town called Washington, North Carolina. Of course, right on the coast as it is, it had its share of catastrophes in both the American Revolution and in the Civil War. We found a house built in 1785 that still held a cannonball lodged in its façade.

And to take history just a little farther, we were given a tour of the Aurora Fossil Museum.

When potash was discovered just outside this little hamlet, the fossils uncovered in that mine were rejected in favour of the economical benefit of the fertilizer. To appease the historians and archaeologists, the mining company does give the rejected material to the town to be sorted over. As an attraction, the town and museum allows tourists to also dig through these piles of discarded dirt in hopes of unearthing a fossil or two.






I found the tooth of an extinct snaggletooth shark. Hubby, not to be outdone, spent half an hour on his knees and came up with many more shark teeth and some small vertebrae bones.

We expect to have more history lessons on the way south. But hopefully, the tongue twisting names are finished for this trip.

W