From the Bald Head Island area to a point where you can take a boat out to Cape Lookout (Beaufort or Harkers Island) is going to take a few hours of driving. The boat ride out to CL and back (and all the logistics of it)is going to take up a lot of your time. I took the speedboat with the sharks teeth from Beaufort (my young daughter at the time got a kick out of it when the captain went full speed ahead in the sound..be prepared to get wet). From what I remember it arrives and leaves Beaufort and Cape Lookout almost hourly. I went to Cape Lookout while staying in Morehead City, and it still took up a majority of my day. CL is not one to be missed though. There is not much out there as far as facilities go so pack well with plenty of provisions (esp water, bug spray, some good shoes/sandals for walking in the hot sand and something to provide you with some shade). It will be a scorcher out there in July.

Also, another one of my favorite drives was to New Point Comfort. I left Hampton Roads area in April 2007 and it was snowing. By the time I got to New Point Comfort, 3-4 inches of snow was on the ground but the roads were very clear. One of the prettiest drives I have ever been on. It's mostly winding two way roads through small towns and backroads VA. Some of the prettiest sites I saw were all the snow covered churches. Due to the April winter storm that day, there were very bad continous crosswind gusts while crossing over the York River Toll Bridge. My SUV was rocked several times by the wind gusts and it felt like the SUV was going to tip over. It did seem like it took forever to get there. At the end of the road you walk out on to a viewing platform. From there the lighthouse is still a ways off so you will need a good zoom lens. Wolf Trap is also nearby and they say you can view it from the distance. By that time a lot the snow had started to melt away but I had to get the rest of my family to Williamsburg for the remainder of the day so off we went. The following day I did the Old/New Cape Henry's(had been to before) and Old Point Comfort(cute and quaint and you can see Thimble Shoals out in the water at some distance). From Old Cape Henry, very far in the distance across Chesapeake Bay you can make out the outline of Cape Charles.

I did the Roanoke LH's coming from the Raleigh area via 64 to the OBX in August 2007 on my way to a Bill In-Store Event so the RR's were on the way except the original Roanoke River in the Edenton town park which required some back tracking. The low bridge over the Albemarle Sound from Plymouth to Edenton had a nice crosswind which made for a hairy crossing if you are not use to that kind of thing. I picked up a nice RRLH shirt at a store nearby for the RRLH restoration efforts.

Of all the lighthouses in North Carolina, Bodie has to be my favorite. While Cape Lookout has a wildness to it you are on your own for the most part out there and dependent on a boat ride back to civilization. The beach out there is awesome with nice sea shells if you are into that kind of thing. At Bodie you get the same feeling of the wildness but are minutes away from civilization should something come up. On my August trip last year I was fortunate enough to visit Ocracoke and Bodie when the doors to the lighthouses were opended up on different days. I ended up going to Bodie twice (one day was cloudy and one day sunny blue sky) so I took some wonderful pictures there with different variations of clouds and sky. I do advise stoping by Chicamacomico LSS. It was not open at the time I rode by it very early in the morning (on the way to Cape Hatteras & Ocracoke) but I was able to get some nice pictures of it. It is easy to ride by and miss if you are not on the lookout for it.