The Cost Of Fun

[I'm reliving my vacation from this last week (sigh) for the next few blogs.]

I’m a cheapskate even on vacation. So I found North Carolina to my liking. Entrance to their beautiful state parks, free. Hiking trail guides to Mt. Mitchell, tallest peak east of the Mississippi, free. A drive down the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway, free. Car ferry to Ocracroke Island, former hideout of Blackbeard the pirate, free. How much is all this free stuff worth to a miser like myself? Priceless.

Of course, not all fun is free. And so it was on our vacation. I paid $6 to climb to the top of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse. And $4 a head for entrance to the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kill Devil Hills, where they made their historic first flight. We also toured the Labrot and Graham bourbon distillery near Lexington, Kentucky. Our AAA tourbook said the tour was free, but it cost $5 each. For that we got a shot of Woodford Reserve, a chocolate bourbon ball, and learned that 99 percent of bourbon is made in Kentucky though it CAN be made anywhere. And that not all corn whiskey is bourbon (Jack Daniels, for instance).

If you wanted to spend more for your fun, there is certainly opportunity to do that. We didn’t. But for $89, you could get three hours of hang-gliding instruction and five flights at Jockey Ridge State Park in Nags Head, North Carolina. The sand dunes there mimic the aerodynamic conditions that were the reason the Wright Brothers set up shop just a few miles down the coast.

If you really have some extra cash, for $1390 you can charter a boat for a day and make a two-hour trip into the Gulfstream of the Atlantic to catch some really big fish. Wendy and I saw a couple of these charter boats pull up to the dock and unload their catch (watching is free!).

What I really thought about doing was bringing a metal detector to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Since pirates frequented this area, I might just turn up some pieces of gold, or even some buried crown jewels! But a park guide explained that this was verboten before I even asked. In fact, he said that if I should happen across some washed up pirate booty, just let it be.

When I told a colleague at work about this, she said, “If I found the crown jewels washed up on shore, I think I would take the jewels and I would run.”

I think I would too.

[A couple people asked for pictures of my vacation. As I’m not as good a photographer as some, er, most, okay, EVERYBODY, the pickings are slim, but following are a few pictures we took.]




Charter fishermen display their catch, Oregon Inlet, Outer Banks, NC



I catch a wave at the beach, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, NC.



The FREE car ferry to Ocracoke Island, Outer Banks, NC



View from the Blue Ridge Parkway, NC.