October/November 2021 Vacation Day 14 · · PAGE 46.

November 8, 2021:  Monday continues southbound from the Wright Brothers National Memorial as we get on US 158 at 2:27 PM and pass this intersection one minute later.  We are looking for a place to get lunch and did not want it to be from Dairy Queen on the left of this photo or a snack from the Circle K on the right side.

We made a drive through the parking lot of this outdoor mall in Nags Head, NC and did not see any place we would want to get take-out food for lunch.  We spent about four minutes slow driving past all the stores and restaurants to get back on US 158 southbound at 2:42 PM.

After leaving the outdoor mall, we saw a food store and an OUTBACK restaurant along with a store selling beach wear for the tourists.  After that there were two real estate offices and across the road away from the beach was a FIRE RESCUE facility on the high-ground on the west side of the highway.  This image below is south of the fire station where beach homes are on the left and some open land with few houses are on the west side of the roadway as we are looking south in the image below.  There are plenty of houses on the west side hidden by trees and closer to the Albemarle Sound which is west of the barrier islands.

The last mile leading up to this sign about the point where the highways separate has factory outlet stores of all kinds.  We will be heading west to Manteo, North Carolina. This sign located on US 158 does not mention that US 64 is going west and begins up ahead going to Manteo.  Whalebone Junction is what they call this place. US 64 WEST begins and US 158 ends here.

This US 64 route sign is the FIRST one in North Carolina heading WEST from the Outer Banks.  It is located about 80 feet from NC route 12 on a connector and is only seen by traffic turning LEFT from route 12 coming to this intersection from the south.  There are no US 64 route signs south of here that are visible to northbound traffic on route 12.  This sign is on the short connector from route 12 to US 64 West.  Just out of sight around the bend is another US 64 sign.

This US 64 route sign is only seen by traffic using the connector from route 12 north to US 64 West.  Traffic from US 158 sees this sign from the EDGE making it virtually invisible to that traffic southbound from US 158 getting on US 64 going west.  This is also the place where US 158 East ENDS.  The water behind the signs is the Albemarle Sound which has connections from a number of tributary rivers in Eastern North Carolina and Virginia.  We are going west and will also visit the airport in the city of Manteo, North Carolina.

Here is a map seen on Wikipedia showing Albemarle Sound in Eastern North Carolina and its major rivers from Virginia and North Carolina.  

The second image shows Pamlico Sound with its two major rivers to provide the water.

Looking at the top map above there is a straight line where the dark blue of Albemarle Sound reaches it's south end along a county line.  The light blue water south of that line is the Pamlico Sound inside the remaining Outer Banks of barrier islands.  That straight line is marked by the US 64 long bridge seen in the 2008 Google Earth image below. 

At the end of the bridge seen in the image above, there is the city limit sign for the town of Manteo, NC.  The sign you see below was the next one you see with a bit of  history about the birth of the first child of English settlers on this island.  They named the child Virginia Dare.  This place today is known as Dare County, NC.

This US 64 route sign is 3.6 miles west of the intersection where US 64 began.  It is the first route sign VISIBLE to traffic that turned on US 64 at the END of US 158.

Darrell's Restaurant is about 3/4 of a mile north from the intersection seen in the photo above.  We stopped here for lunch.  The food was excellent!

Here is my photo of the front door to Darrell's. That is my shadow with my baseball cap on my head.

Darrell's Menu has plenty to choose from. We ordered from the LUNCH ENTREES with two orders of NC Shrimp, one of them fried with cole slaw and potato salad, and one broiled with cole slaw and green beans. The meal was delicious.  The second menu image below is the outside of the menu.  I put in two of the three folder panels from the inside and outside.  The RED ink marks were made by me when selecting the items we preferred for today's lunch.

This is the OUTSIDE of the menu. 

And here are the two panels of the menu that I could not SQUEEZE into the images above.

This Google Earth image below was as close as they got to the Airport at Manteo.

I drove to the airport to get some photos of my own of different areas on the field.  That white cone with a white post on it is a VOR transmitter used for navigation by aircraft in flight as they pass over or near the airport.  The steel tower has some VHF antennas mounted on it for voice communications with aircraft in the air or on the ground at the airport.  November 8, 2021.

This photo is dominated by a rotating beacon light that flashes Green and White during night time hours.  There is also an ORANGE wind sock that is visible to pilots flying in the airport pattern for a landing.  The direction of the windsock indicates which way to make the approach into the prevailing wind on the ground.  November 8, 2021.

I took this photo hoping it would reveal a low-frequency transmitter referred to as a non-directional beacon.  Alas, I did not see the antenna in this image.  November 8, 2021.

This is the main building of the airport.  This airport does not have scheduled airline service.  They do sell AVGAS for propeller airplanes like mine and JET-A fuel for turbo prop airplanes and helicopters like Jet Rangers.  This building at many small airports usually has a fixed base operator (FBO).  They sell the fuel and rent hangar or tie-down space.  November 8, 2021.

There is a second wind sock on the field for the other runway.  November 8, 2021.

There is also parachute jumping that operates from this airport.  The OBX is probably short for "Outer Banks."   November 8, 2021.

This aerial view from Google Earth has information I gathered to describe the navigational equipment on the airport.  When Jerrie Mock flew around the world in 1964, this airport was her most important waypoint when she left Columbus, Ohio on day 1 of her 29-day trip around the world.  This location has two navigational aids to make sure she was on the correct heading going over the ocean to Bermuda, her destination on Day 1.  This is also the closest airport to Bermuda in the Atlantic Ocean.  All of the yellow push pins only work with the GPS files I created for use with Google Earth to follow her trip around the world.  They do not work on this image below.

This image of the VOR (VHF OMNI RANGE) has a cone standing up from the center of the white round building.  With the sun coming from the southeast in this image, the shadow of the cone is visible.  Inside that cone is a spinning directional antenna with an audio signal modulated that is phase shifted as it rotates to send a signal to any airplane that receives that signal, to determine what compass bearing they are TO or FROM the VOR.  The white "spokes" around the VOR with the white boxes are military TACAN (tactical air navigation) antennas to provide a similar service about "where am I" to the military pilot.  The pilot would tune his on-board navigation receiver to 111.6 MHz to get the VOR signals.  Distance measuring equipment gives the distance TO or From the VOR.  Tacan works on a different radio frequency.

This image shows two white vertical poles that support two long wire-antennas in a dipole configuration with most of their signal going NORTHEAST and SOUTHWEST.  The transmitter is operating as a Non-Directional Beacon (NDB) on a low frequency of 370 kilohertz at this airport, operating at a lower frequency than the AM radio band that is in car radios.  That 370 KHz frequency is a clear channel and can be received several hundred miles away.  Jerrie Mock used the VOR to get a good bearing for her course to Bermuda.  She monitored these two nav-aids as she flew out over the Atlantic Ocean.  Bermuda had an NDB in 1964 but it is not still in service as I create this web page in January 2022.  The RED lines show the path of the long wires.  These aerial images from Google Earth can provide additional information when the PUSH PINS are loaded into Google Earth.  I created GPS files and push-pins to install into Google Earth for those folks who want to FLY the route Jerrie Mock flew.

The total time taking photos at the airfield was 3 minutes. We headed out of the airport back toward US 64 at 4:05 PM.