A beautiful Outer Banks sunset, viewed from our deck in Duck, North Carolina.
My favorite thing about our house in Duck was that the main deck faced west and had an extraordinary sunset view. Jessica’s Dune is on a hill, one lot from the Currituck Sound and that lot is undeveloped because it acts as the community access to the sound. This means there is nothing built on that lot and it provides an unparalleled sunset view.
Just another day in paradise.
We used to have a house on Cape Cod, Massachusetts in Truro that had a similar, extraordinary view and it was there that I first realized that there are beautiful sunsets many nights, we just weren’t normally in a place where we could see them. It seems silly now, but I was amazed that you could see fabulous sunsets, night after night after night. When we saw our first sunset at Jessica’s Dune, I knew we were going to re-establish the sunset ritual of being on the deck every night possible and watching the sun sink slowly and brilliantly under the horizon.
A gorgeous sun getting ready to sink under the horizon.
Sunset watching is at its best starting around 15 minutes before the sun slips below the horizon and can last just a few minutes after it sets or can last up to 45 minutes depending on the clouds and the clarity of the sky. Some nights there were no clouds at all and the show was in the rich colors of the sky as it changed from orange, to red and then to purple. Watching the changes reflected on the water was also fabulous and it was often difficult to decide if the sky or the water was the prettiest.
I love that it is always a mystery what you will see and how, on some nights, the colors seem to last forever.
We often had dramatic cloud formations.
The ritual begins with one of us calling to the other that “It’s time!”. Then with some wine and maybe some cheese we’d head out to the deck. Sometimes we’d sit in great Adirondack chairs to watch and other times we’d stand at the railing. Inevitably, we’d think this is the best sunset yet, and I’d run downstairs to get Michael’s camera – hoping we didn’t miss the magic and Michael could take a few great shots. The best part was that we didn’t need to go anywhere. We just had to look out the window and walk out to the deck to see these extraordinary light shows.
We caught this sunset on the way home from Okracoke. We were driving like mad to get to an open spot on the road so Michael could capture this scene. Breathtaking!
It was really hard to pick just a few shots to include in this post because we really had many, many, MANY beautiful sunsets that could fill an album of wonderful evenings spent together. This delectable ritual will always be one of my favorite memories of the Outer Banks.
This was one of the nights with very few clouds. The color of the water was mesmerizing.