Crystal Coast Life

Winter in the Cove

2012-01-19T12:49:00.000-08:00

Bluewater Cove near Swansboro, NC

The phrase "winter in the cove" has a lot of meaning for me.

First it brings back memories of the winter of 1971 which was my first one after college. I spent that first winter in St. Croix Cove, Nova Scotia. I moved to Canada because I desperately wanted to own some land and be someplace sides the city. It was a magical time of learning to live beyond the confines of Cambridge and in fact in another country.

Living in the St. Croix Cove was almost like living in another time. Listening to the radio was our big entertainment. It is hard to imagine, but there were no supermarkets, Lowe's Home Improvement Centers, or Walmarts. There was a small grocery store in Bridgetown, Nova Scotia. It was a nine mile drive to town.

Nine miles does not sound like much, but the first three miles was over a dirt road. I grew up on a dirt road in the south, but a Nova Scotia dirt road in the winter time is something beyond what most people have experienced. That first winter it was not unusual to get several inches of snow, followed by enough rain to completely melt the snow, and finished off with an amazingly abrupt freeze with more snow.

When you translate that into the reality of a dirt road, that means snow, mud, and frozen ruts. The freezing and thawing of northern dirt roads is something to behold.

I spent three winters in the cove before we moved to just north of Fredericton, New Brunswick. We lived there until 1984 when we moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, but even with being able to see water from our bedroom, it wasn't like winter in the cove.

There would be a number of stops along the way, but it would be thirty-four years before we once again got to have another winter in a cove. Our cove now is a quiet spot just off the White Oak River.

We are a lot closer to the water, and all the roads are paved. We can be at the Lowe's Supermarket in less than ten minutes. Next door is a Lowe's Home Improvement Center. There is a Walmart less than twenty minutes away. Compared to that first winter in the cove along the Bay of Fundy, we have all the modern conveniences.

We even have restaurants. There were none on our Nova Scotia shore except for Alice's Clam Shack which was open during the summer. Bridgetown didn't have a restaurant, but they did have a great hardware store. There was no Internet, and our phone line was a party line. I often did my shopping at Beaverfruit Cooperative in Lawrencetown. You could get a bag of feed for the cattle or pigs while picking up your groceries.

In spite of the many differences and forty years between the winters in the coves, there are some similarities. Life along the coast of North Carolina brings with it some isolation, but it is more self inflicted rather than absolute. Still the feeling of being out of the mainstream is similar to what I felt in St. Croix Cove in the early seventies.

The differences end being the sum total of how life in the country has changed over the last forty years.

Going to a restaurant from our home on the Nova Scotia cove required planning and at least forty-five minutes of driving in the winter. We can be at any of several restaurants in under ten minutes from our cove off the White Oak River.

It is not unusual for us to go to the grocery store several times a week. The Internet keeps us in touch with the people we chose instead of the those who want to listen in on the party line.

It was a mile hike to the shore in Nova Scotia, and it seemed the wind never stopped blowing. There never seemed to be a real warm spell in the winter.

Yet at the same time, the number of people we see on a winter day is not too far different from the number that we saw in Nova Scotia.

We are a lot closer to the water here in North Carolina. Still we live in an area where there is more wildlife than might be expected. Having the Croatan National Forest might have something to do with that.

We do get warm weather on the North Carolina coast even in January. This weekend which will mark the end of the third week of January, we should see temperatures approaching seventy degrees. Seventy degrees happens to be a nice summer day on the shore of Nova Scotia.

We just finished off some lettuce from our winter garden. You had to look for lettuce in those early Nova Scotia grocery stores, and you certainly couldn't get any from your garden in January.

I am pleased to have survived those first winters in the Nova Scotia cove. They make our winters here on our cove in North Carolina that much more enjoyable. So far this has been a remarkably nice winter along North Carolina's coast. Even during the fall we enjoyed weather that was hard to believe.

Of course winter lasts a long time in Nova Scotia and rarely stays very long in North Carolina, but it is not surprising that both places have their benefits and people who loving living in their unique climates.

You can find pictures of our Nova Scotia home and the cove at this Picasa Web Album. This winter picture is one that brings back a lot of memories from that first winter in the cove.

From Memories

While we have seen snow in Bluewater Cove here along the White Oak, it is nothing like what we experienced in Nova Scotia.

From Snow Shots Jan. 23, 2011

Summer Heat Games

2011-08-10T04:13:00.000-07:00

With a summer as warm as the one 2011 has given us, enjoying the out of doors means playing a few games with the heat.

If you try to take the heat head on, you need to be near some water where you can jump in quickly to cool off, and sometimes in this heat, a swimming pool does not provide a lot of cooling power.

The ocean waters by the beach are the last refuge of cool water here on the coast. When the swimming pools get too warm, the beach is the place to go. However, even there you have to plan your journey.

There is nothing worse than a long hike in the middle of day across hot beach sand if you dragging equipment for a group of people. We are lucky in the Emerald Isle area because our beach areas are rarely crowded during the week. It is rare that you have to walk very far to get your own space.

One of my favorite beach areas, Third Street Beach, requires a little driving, but it offers a short trip to the beach, and generally smaller numbers of people and sometimes even better fishing.

Another heat game that I play is getting out on the water before it turns hot. Sometimes if we are fishing, we will leave the dock by 6:00 AM and be back before 9 AM when it starts getting hot. Even if I am just going for a quick boat ride, I try to leave early and come back early. My favorite morning ride from the river to the sound usually starts by 7:30 AM and is over by 8:00 AM.

If the heat is especially bad, we sometimes don't even head over to the beach until 5:00 PM. Evening at the beach is one of my favorite times. It is hard to beat the light for photography, and there is almost always a breeze though even that can disappear on some very muggy nights.

As residents of the area, we are actually used to the heat. One of the tricks that we use is learning to live with air conditioning set at 78F so your body doesn't go into shock coming and going from the out of doors.

Another way to deal with the heat is learning to not rush. You can get a lot done outside in the heat if you learn to pace yourself, take breaks, drink lots of fluid, and find some shade when you need it.

While the heat might seem like an enemy, a few games will make it a less formidable opponent.

If you want more information about the beach and the Crystal Coast, check out my "Welcome to the Beach" page for links to other articles.

Summertime at the Beach

2011-06-19T05:55:00.000-07:00

Growing up in North Carolina meant that a summer trip to the beach was just part of life. While some summers we took a trip to the mountains and searched for a motel with a pool, the beach was most often our vacation destination.

My mother was fond of telling me that I was still wearing diapers on my first visit to the beach. I can remember the long trips across the two-lane roads to the coast from Lewisville, NC. We rode in my mother's blue 1952 Ford. Often it was packed with a couple of her nieces who are ten years older than me.

The cottages we stayed in were most often not even air conditioned and certainly not waterfront. It didn't matter to us that the beach was a block or two away. We just enjoyed being at the beach. It was not uncommon to bring our own water in jugs, and we always brought a good supply of homegrown tomatoes for sandwiches.

One of the treats of the whole trip would the "picnic" that would take place on the trip down to the beach. We would pull off the road at picnic table along the road and drag out the cooler and baskets. The fare was varied but always contained at least fried chicken and country ham biscuits. There were no McDonald's on the way to the beaches in the fifties, and I know they were not missed.

Not only has today's trip to the beach changed, but what you find in services once you get there is not very different from what you might at home.

Five years ago we moved to the Crystal Coast portion of the Southern Outer Banks. While we don't live on the beach, we live within just a few miles of the beaches of Emerald Isle. We can usually be parked and walking on the beaches in ten to fifteen minutes depending of course on which beach we choose.

During the busier times of the year, I will often opt for one of the more remote beaches such as Third Street or even my favorite beaches down Coast Guard Road by the Point. It requires a little hike to get to the Coast Guard Road beaches so you loose the impatient crowd pretty quickly. It is not unusual for me to go for a noontime walk on the beach at the Point.

On the way back from the beach, I can easily run some daily errands, including stopping by Winberry's Produce Stand, Lowe's Home Improvement, Ace Hardware, or even the grocery store.

It is hard to believe that we used to haul most of our food to the beach. We have four very nice supermarkets within a ten minute radius of our coastal home. If we want a little more variety, we can drive twenty minutes to Morehead City and visit the local Harris Teeter.

Grocery stores aren't the only thing that have come to the beach.

Every store that I could possibly want with the exception of a Penzey's Spice Store is within thirty minutes of our home. My wife is particularly happy about having a TJ Maxx, Bed, Bath, & Beyond and a Belk's within our normal circuit. We also take the time to make it to the newly remodeled SAMs Club in Jacksonville a couple of times a month. We have figured out that if we shop there around 6 PM on a weekday evening, we almost have the store to ourselves. Of course we have no shortage of Walmarts. There are two in Jacksonville, and one in Morehead City.

Accommodations at the beach have also changed. Today there are plenty of options from a cozy waterfront motel like the Islander in Emerald Isle to hundreds of ocean front or near ocean front homes. You might find an old beach cottage, but you would have to look for it. I was impressed with the survival of some old style beach cottages on a recent day trip to Nag's Head

We are lucky to be in the Emerald Isle area since there is almost no high density housing. There are also no high rise condos to blight the landscape. The picture included in the post was taken just a few blocks from the heart of downtown Emerald Isle. While the middle of June is not quite peak beach season, it is not far off of it, and there is still plenty of room on the beach for everyone. One of the reasons we live in the area is that quiet days are what we normally expect.

With the area not under the same pressure as the Northern Outer Banks, it isn't too much trouble to find some space for yourself on the beach or find even more elbow room by getting out on the water.

If you are interesting in visiting the Emerald Isle area, check out the 2011 version of my Emerald Isle Travel Guide. For more information about the area, you can visit the welcome page of Crystal Coast Life Blog or read my Swansboro area guide. You will also find a PDF Map of the area listing some things to do at the beach and a list of restaurant where you will find some very good food.

If you do visit us, don't be surprised to see an old guy wearing worn orange Crocs walking the beaches with a camera around his neck. I often go out searching for that perfect wave or beach bird picture. Sometimes I even carry a fishing rod for balance. Since March I have hiked all the beaches within the town limits of Emerald Isle at least twice.

Here is a link to some pictures of the beaches near the Point at Emerald Isle. If after visiting, you decide you love the area and want a place here, I can help with that also. Just check my real estate site and remember that having a REALTOR® who walks the beaches is actually an advantage.

Spring weather patterns changing

2011-04-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

Tuesday April 26 was the first morning that I can remember this spring when I woke up to a morning temperature of 70F or better.

Seventy seems to be something of a magical number. When the nights are consistently in the seventies, a lot of plants get very serious about their spring growth. Those warmer temperatures also bring some life to small creeks and guts which lead to the river and sound. Last night I heard lots of jumping in the water outside my office window. I know there are plenty of small fish swimming around the gut behind our house.

Warmer night temperatures are also favored by the palm trees and our centipede lawns. The only thing slowing down growth of everything has been the lack of rain. Even the Saturday that brought lots of tornadoes to North Carolina did not bring the Crystal Coast much rain. While our friends in Roanoke, Virginia reported over four inches of rain, we got one quarter inch or less in the area.

We have enjoyed blue skies since April 17, the day after the tornadoes. Fine weather has been with us since then. While we have had persistent wind, other than that it has been beautiful for most of April. Easter weekend was a great start to the beach season. However, the net result of all the wind and no rain is that we have been rather dry.

The line of thunderstorms that rolled through the area on April 26 helped greatly. While we didn't get a tremendous amount of precipitation, it was certainly enough to keep us going, and there are more showers in the forecast for later in the week. Once again we had beautiful blue skies this morning, but as the day moved along, it started to look more and more like rain was coming.

In the morning, after a morning run-in with a mother killdeer, I did my tomato plant maintenance, then mowed and trimmed the yard. When I went in for lunch, I turned on the sprinklers since the yard was so dry. I was well aware of the potential for rain on the evening of April 26, but I figured there was no danger of the yard getting too wet.

After lunch I cleaned our front deck, and then decided to tackle our skiff which is on a lift a few feet behind our home. I knew that I didn't have time to completely clean the boat, but I hoped the get some of the worst dirt off it. I was just finishing up when one of my fishing buddies showed up to visit. Of course having a visitor put an end to any serious cleaning.

After my friend left I was just getting ready to carry everything the few feet to our garage when I noticed some dust on the side of the boat. Likely it came from the construction site next to our home in Bluewater Cove. Hopefully they will be finished in a month. As I was spraying off the side of the boat, the rains came, and it was pouring before I could get everything disconnected and into the garage.

I got a little soaked, but it was a warm rain and a nice finish to a very productive day. The rains stopped in time for me to grill some hamburgers to go along with the fresh Florida corn on the cob that my wife had purchased on the weekend. The corn and the burgers were delicious. We even had a pretty good hothouse tomato to go with our burgers which were dressed with lettuce from our garden.

Spring Mornng on Raymond's Gut

2011-03-31T20:26:00.000-07:00

Spring is a funny season whether you are on the coast of the Southern Outer Banks or the mountains of the South. Spring often teases you with glimpses of summer, or the warmth of spring can completely disappear in a couple of hours. You can have wonderful weather one afternoon, and then you are back in winter.

The picture at the top of the post was taken just after we had a frost that went all the down to the water in Raymond's Gut which runs behind our house all the way to the White Oak river. I took the picture on a morning walk around the boardwalk in our community, Bluewater Cove. The fog hanging over the water is normal when there is a big temperature difference between the water and air. We see the fog especially when the water is warmer than the air.

While walking I was serenaded by many of the spring birds. Fortunately the cold temperatures only lasted a few hours, but it was still enough that I had to cover my young tomato plants. Because Carteret County doesn't have any rocks, I ended up buying a bag of rocks which is a hard thing to do for someone who farmed a new crop of rocks every year in Canada where we used to have a couple of farms.

While spring sometimes doesn't come in the Canadian Maritimes until May, you can count on it being here in the South by the first week of April. I think that the latest that we have seen strawberries here on the coast is about the middle of April.

Spring is a great time on the coast. Once we get through the pine pollen, it is possible to sleep with your windows open at night. We can go a week at a time without the heat pumps running. Sometimes it gets hot enough for the air conditioners to come on late in the afternoon, but we usually shut them off and let the evening breezes cool our homes.

As the waters warm they become alive with bait. We already had a week or two of that earlier in the spring. It is a great time to be around the water, but it is a challenging time because the winds are often blowing. That means getting out on the water is something that has to be done when the conditions are right, or you miss the opportunity and end up sitting at the dock for a long time.

Later in April, it is not unusual to see winter weary northerners actually in our ocean waters. Most of us here on the coast wait until June to get anything but our toes wet. There are other milestones of spring.

I have already managed to catch the first fish of the season from our skiff, and I got in my first kayaking trip. I can hardly wait until next week when the warm temperatures come back. I will be back to exploring the beaches. I hope to get in a five mile hike along the beaches before the end of the first week of April.

And I definitely want to get back to my uniform of shorts, tee-shirt, and crocs or Birkenstocks. Spring is definitely in the air in the South.

More summer dreams

2011-03-27T18:53:00.000-07:00

March has been a fickle friend to most of us in North Carolina. While we have seen some stellar weather the third week of March, a last blast of cold air has sucked the warmth out of the land and the area's waters.

It is hard to go from shorts and temperatures in the eighties back to temperatures that seem to refuse to get out of the forties. I was in full spring mode, taking long walks along the beach, testing the local waters for some early fish, and even paddling my kayak well out into the river.

The change in the weather did not worry me at first. It seemed that the temperatures being called for didn't match what I was seeing. March 25 and 26, we easily got into the sixties when the weathermen were adamant that we would not get out of the fifties.

Then the bottom fell out on Sunday, March 27. We got up to temperatures in the mid-forties, and even worse, the temperature trended down all day. I would not be surprised to see us in the upper thirties March 28. That would be a very cold temperature for the Crystal Coast late in March. I suspect the waters cooled off once again. Once the waters have lost their heat, there is nothing to moderate the cold breezes from the north.

With cooler weather deflating my spring expectations, the only relief is to resort to dreams of summer moments that bring back warmth and the beautiful colors of the area's waters. I know this short spell of cool weather is only a temporary setback, but it helps to visualize great summer moments while we are enduring the cold air.

One of the great trips that we took last summer was when we went out the channel from the Intracoastal Waterway to Hammocks Beach and then cut behind the beach and made our way over to the Inlet by the Point at Emerald Isle. This large set of photos was taken to help folks unfamiliar with the area safely navigate from the ICW or dock at Hammocks Beach on Bear Island to Bogue Inlet. They also help me forget the cold of late March.

Somehow I always associate the Point at Emerald Isle with warmth and summer. I suspect it is because I never venture over unless the weather is nice. Thinking about good times at the Point is a great way to forget these cool spring temperature. Another batch of photos that I like to look at when summer seems far away is this one of ocean waves that caught the light just right.

With lots of photos in my memory and the recent thought of our first fishing trip of the season, I will make it through to April which I hope brings us warmer temperatures. It cannot happen soon enough.

I checked back to last year, and it was in February that I started dreaming about beaches to keep my morale up. In early March last year, I started thinking about boat trips.

While I have been on the water more and earlier this year, the recent reversal in weather still means that this year the cold has continued a little longer than normal. Last year at this time I wasn't worried about my tomato plants. Worrying about frost at the end of March pretty well fits with this year which many people are calling the coldest winter on the Southern Outer Banks in one hundred years.

Shifting sand makes for a world that even Google cannot capture

2011-03-06T13:33:00.000-08:00

We live in a world that perhaps except for the seas and some of the jungles has pretty well been explored. With today's GPS systems and smart phones with built-in GPS, it would seem that not only is there little left to explore, but also there is not much of chance of not really understanding where you are.

Actually that is not the case if you are fortunate enough to live along North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks which is also know as the Crystal Coast.

I love maps and have been fascinated with them since I could barely read. I suspect much of my reading and math ability came from being given the job of navigator at the very early age of six. My mom was raising me as a single mom, and I got the job of getting us to and from the beach or mountains whenever we traveled.   While maps have not quite disappeared from gas stations, they have left the consciousness of most young people.

If you are under forty "mapping it" means something entirely different to them than it might to us older folks. I have been fortunate enough in life to have traveled many places including Alaska and Newfoundland. Mapping a trip to me often mean taking a pen and eventually a yellow highlighter and drawing a line on a paper map. Mapping a trip today often means going to a website and plugging in two destinations and having Google, Mapquest, or Bing print out instructions on how to get there with almost no thought on your part.

There are also people, my self included, who plug a destination into their GPS or smart phone and listen to a computerized voice tell them how to reach their destination. Sometimes it turns out those directions are not exactly optimized for the best travel time.

Once when my wife and I flew by float plane into the barrens of Newfoundland in the early eighties, knowing now to plot a course on a topographic map and follow it back to our rendezvous with the little Cessna kept us from either a long arduous hike or a very cold, lonely winter in the wilderness.

The media likes to worry those of us who live near the coast have built our homes on shifting sands which disappear in the next wind storm. While some of that goes on, there are plenty of people on the North Carolina coast who live in spots where the sand isn't shifting and the barrier islands are relatively stable.
However, there are always places along barrier islands where sand is being moved from one place to another. The Point on Emerald Isle is one of those places. It is where ocean currents meet river current in a swirling battle of land and water.

I first visited the Point in the early seventies. Then the only way to reach it was take a long drive down the beach in a four wheel drive vehicle. My uncle Austin and I did that for a day of fishing that will forever be memorable not for what we caught, but for where we caught it. We spent most of the day on the Point and saw no other person. Our biggest catch was a horseshoe crab.

Today the Point is much easier to reach, but it has become one of those few places where it is possible to escape the bounds of the modern world.   While you can visit it on Google maps, what you see there or on your GPS or cell phone doesn't really match what is is actually there.

Aside from me showing you my recently created map of the Point or asking one of the local who often walk or fish the Point, you are actually on your own at the Point. It is a huge expanse of sand that just a few years ago wasn't there. It was only in 2008 when the access to the Point was repaired after having washed away. The water had actually taken away the dune at the end of the access ramp. Today there is over 1400 feet of sand to the nearest water by Bogue Inlet.

If you have a look at this picture taken in November 2007, you can get an idea of the magnitude of the change from then until March 5 when I took the picture at the top of the post. Last summer I was amazed to see people wading just yards from the boat channel at the Point.

So in a world that is increasing mapped, fenced, out of bounds, or inaccessible to most of us, the Point at Emerald Isle offers a rare opportunity to do some real exploring.   I can tell you what it is like, but Mother Nature will make some changes each day. At a time when kids spend far too much of their time in front of computers, a walk on the Point can teach them that there is much to learn outside of a computer screen.

While marketers are trying to convince us that we need 3D televisions, I suggest visiting the original 3D experience, the out of doors. You might be surprised at how much everyone enjoys it. And if they start whining about missing their iPad or Playstation, it is probably time that you locked that stuff up for a year or two.

I will give you access to my Google map that was made on March 5, 2011. The red line is the track that I took, but it is just the outer boundary of the sand. What looks like water on the Google map is mostly sand, and some sand on the Google map is now water. The only way to really know what is there is to get some sand between your toes.

Even in 2011 still plenty of exploring at the Point in that huge expanse of sand mingled with the water of Bogue Inlet and the Atlantic Ocean. We are lucky to live in such place, and those who visit and take the time to explore will be richly rewarded.

Spring weather can throw anything at us

2011-02-28T01:09:00.000-08:00

: Swansboro swallowed by the fog

Sunday morning we got up to a very foggy world. You could hardly see the White Oak River from our clubhouse in Bluewater Cove.

It took me a while to get going anyway, and the fog certainly did not help things. As we got ready to go church at Cape Carteret Presbyterian, the fog began to clear
.
When we left the house, the skies had cleared and our neighbor was washing his truck. On the way out of the subdivision, we met a couple of other neighbors walking their dogs in the fine weather. By the time we got out of our of our car after the drive of seven or eight minutes, there was no question that Sunday, February 27, was turning into a nice day.

After church, people seem to linger in the parking lot just to enjoy the warm temperatures instead of rushing to their cars as has been the case for most of the winter. Even our minister must have wanted to get outside, since his sermon seemed a little shorter than usual. We were almost home when I looked at the clock and noticed that it was only five minutes after noon.

We had a simple lunch of leftover orange chicken which my wife had made from a recipe in the Eat What You Love Cookbook the previous Friday evening. After cleaing up the kitchen, we "rested our eyes" for about ten minutes, and I checked on my tiny tomato seedlings growing in my upstairs office, then we loaded some cameras into the car and headed to Beaufort.

I am in the process of revising my popular area travel guides, and I wanted to get some fresh pictures of Beaufort before I started working on the web page. The thirty-five minute drive to Beaufort was uneventful, but it did take place under a beautiful sunny blue sky.

We parked at one the dockside parking areas, and I started wandering the mostly deserted streets and snapping pictures of some of my favorite Beaufort spots. My wife gamely tried to guess where I might wander and keep up with me but still stay in the warmth of the sun.

There were a fair number of people in Beaufort this particular Sunday, and some of them were out on the water. While it was five or six degrees cooler than it was in Bluewater Cove, that is nothing unusual, especially this time of year.

After tiring of snapping pictures, we loaded up and headed home. As we often do, we made the decision to go back down the beach instead of back on Highway 24 which was the way we came. Going back down the beach in the afternoon close to sunset can be a real challenge. It is an interesting enough experience that I even wrote a post, Driving into the sun, about it a couple years ago.

As is our normal practice, we made a stop along the beach to enjoy some ocean air and to snap some additional pictures. The place we stopped was just inside of the town limits of Emerald Isle and high on a dune. After examining the waves through my telephoto lens, I almost wished that I had my fishing rod with me. There were a number of seagulls feeding on small fish close to the shore. Still it was fairly windy and the waves would have made fishing difficult, but it was still nice to be by the ocean on a sunny afternoon.

We pulled back on the road and headed on towards Emerald Isle. We were enjoying the brand newasphalt pavement when I noticed that the cars coming towards us had turned on their head lights. It was only another mile or so before we also disappeared into a fog bank which seem to clear only as we crossed the bridge from Emerald Isle to Cape Carteret. From the bridge we could see that Swansboro was also engulfed in fog.

After the short drive home, we were unloading the car when I noticed a car had pulled into the house for sale just up the street from us. As I watched them back out of the driveway I made the guess that they were coming in our direction. Since I am a Realtor® and have my neighbor's waterfront home listed, I decided to amble out to the flyer box in case they stopped to get one.

I wasn't surprised when they stopped, and I did answer a few questions for them. It turned out they were already working with another real estate agent who is a fishing buddy of mine. They were curious about boating in Bluewater Cove and on the White Oak. I suggested a couple of places where they might find homes in their price range. Their parting question was whether or not there was enough water at that moment to go boating. That was an easy question to answer since I had already looked at the tide level and decided to take my boat out to try to catch a sunset picture on the river.

We are lucky in Bluewater Cove. The wind, weather, and tides have to work really hard to conspire to take most of our water away. It is a rare day when we cannot get out on the river. It might not be nice out there, but there is usually plenty of water to let us get there.

It only took me about five minutes to get my gear on the boat and the GPS hooked up. Then I headed out the inlet to the first buoy, Red Sixteen, to try for my sunset picture. I was not very surprised to see that Swansboro was still in a fog bank. I was pleased to see that the recent warm temperatures have raised the water temperature to 60F. I cannot believe how fast the water has warmed. It was down to 36F in December.

The boat ride back to the dock was short and pleasant. Sunday night the fog has found us again. Monday I hear we are in for some high winds and very warm temperatures. You just never know what Mother Nature is going to throw at you here on the coast. I can take anything but snow.

You can check out a few of my Beaufort pictures that I have managed to get onto the web. They are not labeled yet, they are still nice. You can also see our trip to Beaufort and back on a Google map. It is a multi-page map. Also if you are interested, you can even view my quick boat trip on another Google map.
Finally if you want to visit the area, here is my newly updated Emerald Isle Travel Guide for 2011.

Grabbing Blue Water When You Can Find It

2011-02-07T20:25:00.000-08:00

No one living on the Crystal Coast and in fact most of the US is going to deny this has been a tough winter. We have seen snow here on the coast. It is not something that is normal here, but after three shorts visits this year, people know what it looks like.

While we have warmed up from those really cold days that made our December and January average temperatures several degrees below normal, we have enjoyed some relatively warm days in February.

But as the cold weather has departed, we have ended up dealing with rain. Friday and Saturday of the first week of February ended up as a washout. We got about 2.25 inches of rain during the two days. We did get warm temperatures along with the rain.

Sunday dawned with blue skies, and I was determined to get out on the water if possible. We made our normal trip to church and took advantage of the youth group's "Souper Bowl Sunday" meal which gives you a chance to enjoy some homemade soup for a small donation.

Then we had an open house that we wanted to check out in a waterfront community over on Queen's Creek. So by the time we were done with that it was the middle of the afternoon. My wife wanted the fireplace turned on once we got in the house, but I resisted the urge to get in my easy chair and take a nap.

I switched to a sweatshirt and then put on my life preserver suspenders and a windproof jacket. Then I grabbed the gear that makes for a safe boating experience. That includes a spare life preserver, a throw cushion, my emergency gear, radio phone, and our GPS. Some of the safety gear stays on the boat even in winter, and I always have my cell phone.

It only took a few minutes to load the skiff, untie the bow line, put in the drain plug, and hook up the GPS. Then I dropped the boat in the water and headed out Raymond's Gut which cuts through Bluewater Cove and leads to the White Oak River.

Near the clubhouse I managed to spook a great blue heron. I noticed the water temperature had warmed a lot since my last trip in January. Mostly the temperatures that I saw Sunday, February 6, were in the fifties. I idled out the gut until I entered the river where I gave it a little more throttle to maintain better control in the stronger current and winds.

As I turned down river at the Red Sixteen Buoy, I moved the throttle forward and trimmed the boat until it got up on plane. Then I backed off on the throttle just a little and enjoyed my ride across the bright blue waters of the White Oak River. It was a pretty smooth ride considering the chop.

It was definitely not a warm summer or fall boat ride. The air temperature this time of year close to the water is pretty close to the water temperature so I basically rode down the river at 50F traveling at 30 MPH going into a 10 MPH breeze. I pulled my hood tight around my head, and it was not too bad. In fact my last trip in January, I had only made it to Jones Island. This time I made it all the way to Swansboro Harbor which is on the other side of the Highway 24 bridges.

I snapped a few pictures to go with the ones I managed on the way down and headed back up river. The ride back up was warmer since I did not have the added breeze. I managed to catch our neighborhood king fisher sitting in a tree on the way back to our dock. I added his pictures to the collection that I have been working on this winter.

Since I was tracking myself with my Android phone you can see the track at one of my Google maps. I have linked a few pictures to the map track. Click on the camera icon, and then click on the text link to see the actual picture.

I can hardly wait until the weather gets warmer and spending more time on the water gets a lot more comfortable.

Early morning blue sky a false hope

2011-02-05T12:39:00.000-08:00

Well I can say that I am really glad that the blue sky that I saw early this morning was at least accompanied by warm temperatures. Had this much moisture shown up two weeks ago, we might still be digging out from our snowstorm. While the blue sky didn't stay with us, the warmth has.

It pretty much rained all yesterday, but when I walked out on the dock this morning the rain had stopped, and I was impressed with the temperature change. It was a big improvement from the thirties yesterday morning when it was not only damp on the dock but also cold. We just barely made it into the low forties yesterday afternoon.

Just before noon today, we had managed to sneak up to slightly over 60F which at least makes all the wind and rain not so bad.

We have just come out of January. It is typically our month with the least percentage of sunshine (55%). Even then we don't normally get two back to back days of rainfall. The good news is that by the end of February, we are usually enjoying 60% sunshine on the way to our peak in April, so hopefully this rainfall will just be a damp memory in a week or two.

I have my tomato seeds on order, and I am ready for spring and maybe some fishing. I checked our rainfall gauge when I had lunch, and we are approaching 2.25 inches. It should take care of any lingering drought here along the coast at least for a while.

There are lot of areas south of us for which this rain is very welcome. I know a mountain valley up in Virginia which would love this rain. I guess we will take what we can get since we will likely need it later in the spring as the growing season starts. If it stays warm, we could get strawberries in late March or early April, but the earlier cold weather could make them slide to later in April.

The average high for the first five days of this February this year comes out to 57 degrees. That is a welcome change from our recent weather. It is nice to have some relief from the cold and ice breaking adventures.

The average high temperature for the first week of January 2011 was around 48F, but that was better than the second week of January when the average high dropped to 39F. We have been rebounding since then.

Our normal average high in January is around 55F. I think January 2011 had an average high of 46F, nine degrees below the normal average. It is definitely been a cold winter everywhere.

I never would have guessed that the Dallas-Fort Worth area would be fighting five inches of snow the day before the SuperBowl.

We got one more peak at blue sky earlier this afternoon, we have now returned to wind, clouds and mist, but it is still warm.

A nice place for wintering humans and birds

2011-01-30T20:42:00.000-08:00

The weather is finally starting to break our way with Sunday, January 30, seeing a high temperature of 69F. That was just about the perfect temperature for an afternoon winter walk which became more of a stroll since there were so many people out enjoying the weather

Actually the last week of January has been a very nice week. I think that I only missed one day of going for my afternoon hikes.

Our small subdivision of forty some homes is a little over three miles up the White Oak River from where it empties into Bogue Sound not very far from Bogue Inlet which leads to the Atlantic Ocean. We have more marshes, water, and pine trees than anything.

Being in a nice area for people and wildlife is one of the benefits of being sandwiched between the White Oak River and the 158,000 acres of Croatan National Forest while having the 56 miles of Cape Lookout National Seashore on guard in the Atlantic.

With all that wild land, it is not surprising that we have plenty of birds, including some of our bigger shore birds like pelicans and herons.

With an address like "White Heron Lane," it is no shock that we have a good dose of herons. We have blue ones, white ones, and green ones. There is also a kingfisher that lives in the neighborhood. Once when I was out in my kayak, I got to see an osprey dive bomb a fish. Of course we also see hawks in the area.

We have a plentiful supply of ducks and cormorants to go along with the other birds. I really have enjoyed the hooded mergansers who have been visiting in our waters this winter. In addition to the bigger birds, there are number of small birds around. Just today I saw a northern flicker, a red headed woodpecker, a downy woodpecker, a cardinal, and some still unidentified small birds. We had an early morning hooded merganser visit, and the usual collection of herons were around most of the day.

If you have a look at this map of one of my afternoon hikes, you can get a pretty good idea of the opportunity that there is to see some of our neighborhood birds while never being very far from our home. While the aerial photo leaves out a new road which has no homes along it yet, the map is otherwise accurate. Raymond's Gut, the water which runs right behind our home, connects us to the White Oak. The gut offers some amazing opportunities to get close to some of the larger birds.

Twice this week I have been able to use the fish cleaning stand on our dock as a heron blind. Once I got very close to a great blue heron. This Sunday, January 30, just after we came home from church, I noticed a white heron (egret) walking in the shallows of the water towards our dock.

I had not even had time to change from my church clothes, but I crouched and made my way slowly to my ad hoc heron blind. I poked just my head and the camera over the top and started snapping pictures.

I have learned that you can only take four or five shots, and then you need to pause so they will keep coming towards you. The pictures that I got Sunday afternoon were just amazing. You can have a look at a selection of feathered photos taken this week at this Picasa Web Albums lin k.

With the weather warming up, the pelicans seem to have deserted us, but that just means that the herons have come back in force. On top of that I saw a bunch of robins this past Friday.

With a great mix of woods, water, and marshes, it is hard to beat Bluewater Cove for a nice place to enjoy some winter birds. We often get to watch herons and sometimes even pelicans feeding in the morning while we are sitting at our table eating breakfast. It is a morning show that I prefer to any that they might cook up on television.

In spite of some recent but actually rare snowstorms, North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks is a neat place to winter for humans, especially any who enjoy watching some nice feathered neighbors. We also have snow fairies to handle any snow shoveling.

The home next to me is for sale if you need a great spot to watch the birds while wintering in relative warmth.

On the river one week after the snow storm

2011-01-29T20:20:00.000-08:00

It was on January 22, 2011, just a week before I wrote this post, that the Crystal Coast got hit with a pretty good snow storm. We had four inches along the White Oak River, and a few miles away near the Emerald Isle beaches, they had seven inches of snow. It even stuck to the roads which is very unusual here.

As it was snowing that Saturday, I made a promise to myself. As soon as the snow stopped, I would try to get on the river if the tides and winds cooperated, and the temperature got above 50F.

These pictures provide a pretty good idea of the snow that we got from the storm. Saying that it was the third snowstorm that we have seen this year makes it sound like we live in a North Carolina snow belt.

Fortunately is not nearly as bad as it sounds. This last storm was by far the largest of the three that we have had in the winter of 2010-2011, but even with this largest storm our driveway melted clean by noon of the next day. I bet I know some northern inhabitants who would trade their last storm for our "blizzard."

All week after our snow, the weather here continued to improve while the Northeast was being pounded with snow. We even woke up one morning to 54F. It was great to return to more normal temperatures, but the tides remained very low until late in the week, and I did not want to chance getting stuck off my lift so my skiff stayed at the dock.

With the nicer weather, and my boat still on the lift, I returned to my afternoon hikes which the coldest weather had stopped.. To have some computer fun I started using the My Tracks app on my Android powered Droid phone to record my hikes. With the link you can see one of my afternoon hikes on a map.

While there is a very new road missing on the aerial photos of our subdivision, you still can get an idea of how my hike took me on the edge of the marsh, through our boat yard, over some open land and up to the lake at the center of Bluewater Cove. I was looking for hooded mergansers, who have been delighting us with their showy plumage, but there were no ducks on the pond that afternoon.

When I finally decided to make good on my promise and check the river out, it was twenty minutes to noon and the temperature crawled over 50F. I was bundled up with a vest and hooded jack which were both on over my life jacket suspenders. I added a nice cap and sunglasses and then pulled my hood up. I would prefer headed down the river with just shorts and a tee-shirt, but we got a ways to go on that. I have to go back to late November to find some close to warm boating.

It probably should be lesson one in boating. The air temperature around you is most often going to be close to the water temperature. Today was no different. The water temperature was in the mid-forties, and if you add something close to 35 MPH for a windchill, riding in the skiff actually felt like I was outside in a temperature in the low thirties to upper twenties. You might say that it was still pretty nippy out on the river.

The ride idling out the gut to the river wasn't too bad. but when I turned and gave the skiff some throttle and headed down river, I could really feel that wind chill. As you can see from the map, I made it almost to Jones island near Swansboro.

There were no clouds in sky, everything was a beautiful blue but it was still too cold for much of boating even bundled up like I was.

On my way back, I took to circle near the red sixteen buoy so I could safely to check in with Foursquare with my cell phone. While there is little danger of someone stealing my honorary title as Mayor of Red Sixteen, you cannot be too safe these days.

The cold weather has turned the gut which runs from our house out to the White Oak river into a big bird sanctuary. I have gotten a number of great bird pictures which I have posted on the web.

With the weather warming, our big bird population has dropped somewhat. Still I photographed a couple of nice white herons sunning themselves in the pines behind our home the same afternoon as my chilly boat ride.

This winter has been one to remember, but I am hoping that my boat trip sent a strong message to winter. We have had enough already, just ship whatever cold weather and snow that is left over to Canada and New England.

After all most of those frozen Northern souls choose to live there, and secretly enjoy shoveling the white stuff.

Finally a normal winter storm on the NC coast

2011-01-25T13:30:00.000-08:00

This has been something of a challenging winter so far along the Southern Outer Banks. In an area where the normal high temperature averages about 50F even in the depths of January, even 40F has been a hard to find temperature this winter.

Last year on January 20, 2010, the first significant snow in six years arrived in the area. A storm with even more snow hit in February. This year through the first twenty-two days of January, we have already had three snow storms that more than covered the ground.

This last storm on January 22 not only covered the ground but it also stuck to the roads. Until this storm our high temperatures seemed to be stuck in the low to mid thirties, a near perfect temperature for snow.

Fortunately this next January 25 storm which is sweeping out of the south is staying closer to the coast with the consequence that we are on the warm side of the storm.

Our temperature on Saturday, January 22, hung around 32F all day with the result that we ended up with four inches of snow. Areas as little as ten to fifteen miles farther inland had no snow and actually experienced a sunny day with blue skies while we were getting whacked with a snow storm that delivered up to seven inches of snow to Emerald Isle and some of the other beaches.

We are facing a different scenario on January 25. Our daytime temperature is close to 50F. We are actually going to be even warmer tomorrow with the temperature approaching the upper fifties.

It will be a true winter scenario for areas to the west and north of us.

Until you get to the mountains, the farther from the coast you go tomorrow, the more likely you will find snow in the afternoon.

Rain on the coast during a winter storm is a fairly normal weather pattern for the Southern Outer Banks. Storms swing across the South, collide with the warmth, moisture, and instability of the air over the Gulf Stream. A strong storm, most often a Nor'easter forms and depending on its track, some areas can get tremendous amounts of snow while other areas suffer through a mixture of precipitation types along with strong winds and high waves.

We can get hit with wintry Nor'easters or with just wet ones. This one is forming just far enough away from us that we will just get some rain and maybe wind. Except for this year, a wintry Nor'easter is an uncommon visitor to our beaches.

Having rain and sending our northern neighbors a wintry mess is a more normal pattern for us, and after our winter so far, it is a welcome return to normalcy. I hope the folks up north survive this latest onslaught without too many difficulties.

No Boats in Bogue Sound Today

2011-01-08T20:41:00.000-08:00

We are a little over a week into the new year. While the weather has been a little better this first week, we are still not regularly hitting our normal average temperatures for January. Normally western Carteret County has a January average high of 55F and an average low of 35F.

We had a good start to the month with a couple of days in the mid-sixties followed by another couple of days when we managed to make it over 50F. However, since Wednesday, January 5, we have not managed to break 50F.

Saturday, January 8, we managed to get to 47F and have some sunshine, but there was a fairly persistent breeze so it felt colder than that. With the air temperature in the upper forties and the water temperature in the lower forties, the thought of being on the water in a boat was not exactly pleasant. I was not surprised to see no boats in Bogue Sound when we crossed over the Emerald Isle Bridge. The picture at the top of the post was taken from the bridge Saturday afternoon.

Emerald Isle was also a little bit like a ghost town. There was a huge difference in traffic between this weekend, and New Year's weekend when we had those warm days in the upper sixties. Today when I stopped at the beach, there were no people walking on the beach. There were lots of people a week ago when we had temperature twenty degrees warmer.

I guess we have to consider ourselves lucky. We are part of that shrinking portion of the United States that does not have snow on the ground. If predictions are correct for the upcoming week, even coastal North Carolina might fall victim to a snowstorm with the potential to bring winter weather from Dallas, Texas to Atlantic Canada. Looking at the Boone, NC forecast this morning, I was not surprised that it looked more wintry than the part of Canada where I lived for sixteen years.

There is nothing you can do about the weather, especially when it has gone haywire. This year areas as diverse as Great Britain, Florida, California, and even Arizona are joined with most of the US east coast in the common misery of some nasty weather.

Right now I will continue to enjoy the quiet of Raymond's Gut and our feathered winter visitors. I will let the memories of a much warmer Bogue Sound lull me to sleep. Warmth will make it to the Carolina coast, it always does. Until we get the warmth from the sun, we will just have to settle for what we get from our gas logs in the fireplace.

Just maybe this will be the last serious shot of winter here on the Southern Outer Banks, we can always hope.

Cold weather is a good time to do some inside work. I even got my real estate websites updated this week. The cold was not severe enough to stop my afternoon walks. I only missed one day and that was because we were in Morehead City, but it was cold enough to make me wish for some of that August heat.

Bare Feet on the Beach on New Year's Eve

2010-12-31T18:35:00.000-08:00

Today we even made it into the mid-fifties here on the Southern Outer Banks. It was a real treat after all the cold weather, and I think most of North Carolina figured out that we are going to have a warm weekend.

At least that the way it seemed at Lowe's Grocery in Cape Carteret this afternoon. I have not seen the parking lot that full since the height of summer. We had to look for a parking spot, and the grocery store was a zoo.

The bread row had been ravaged. We only needed a few things so once we got our checked out, we decided that Emerald Isle needed investigating. If lots of visitors made their way to the beach, changes to the recent deserted state of the island would be very obvious.

Traffic was noticeable on the bridge. Then based on our Lowe's parking experience, we were not surprised to see the Food Lion parking lot a lot more crowded that one would expect for a normal winter Friday.

As I continued along Emerald Drive, the traffic was much more noticeable than it has been over the holidays. There was a steady stream of cars headed onto the island instead the deserted highway that we have seen for the last week.

We continued east along Highway 58 until we got to the Western Regional Access. It was also not empty as it has been in recent days. There were actually several cars in the parking lot and a few groups of people on the beach.

There was absolutely no wind, and it was warm in the bright sunshine. The waves were calm, and there were a number of people walking along the beach. We really enjoyed our time in the sun, and I even ventured down to the water.

What really surprised me was that I saw two groups of young walkers going barefooted on the beach. While the air might have been in the low fifties, the ocean water is still in the low forties with the result that the recently wet sand would not be much warmer.

This has been a cold stretch of weather. It is something that I would like to forget as soon as the warm February sun can find me. This morning we awoke to an early morning temperature of just over 30F. On New Year's Eve both in 2008 and even in 2009 which no one would class as a warm winter, our early morning temperatures were in the fifties. We are making progress, but it still slow digging ourselves out of the freezer not that the area waters are chilled to the upper thirties.

The only consolation that I can offer is that much of the east coast including Florida has been in the same chest freezer that has kept the Crystal Coast frozen. The number of record low temperatures in the last few days is amazing. There were also 539 new snow fall records set last week.

At least with our snow gone, we will be able to bask in the sixties for the next couple of days. It is a start on a better weather pattern. Any day in the sixties is one less day of winter.

Based on the number of empty boat trailers at Wildlife Ramp in Cedar Point, we are not the only hopeful people around.

Snow Arrives in Time for Boxing Day

2010-12-26T08:50:00.000-08:00

After listening on Christmas Day to snow reports from everyone to the west of us, we finally have a dusting of snow on Sunday morning, the day after Christmas. Boxing Day is a traditional holiday observed on the day after Christmas in a number of English speaking countries. We were first introduced to Boxing Day in Maritime Canada where we lived for a number of years in the seventies and eighties.

The time after Christmas is always a time of reflection for me. Having a little snow on Boxing Day here on the Southern Outer Banks is just a good way to pull in some extra memories. Last year I wrote something of a season recap on December 4.

It is interesting to look back at that post and compare what I reported to this year. Last winter was very cold, and this December has turned out to be very cold just as I predicted earlier in the month. We have seen plenty of ice. Even yesterday when I took our skiff out on the river on one of our rare warm days, our skiff ended up breaking some ice. I also found that the temperature of the White Oak River was down to 39.5F.

Considering our average high temperature in December is usually 58F while our low is normally 35F, this December has been very cold. I believe we have had more days that did not reach 40F this December than we have had in the previous four winters combined.

Now here we are with a dusting of snow on the ground while our old stomping ground in a snow belt north of Frederiction, New Brunswick has bare ground for Christmas.

I do not really mind our coastal snow, we did not get enough to stick on the roads, and all of it will me. All of the snow will melt quickly. Certainly it will gone by later in the week when our temperatures should be in the fifties. I have even seen one forecast that has us in the sixties by the day after New Year's Day.

Of course that might be tempered by air flowing across all the new fallen snow to the north and west of us. There is nothing like arctic chilled air to make you wish for that roaring fire in the fireplace.

I wish everyone to the north of us in path of the day after Christmas 2010 blizzard luck at coping with all the snow and cold.

I feel somewhat sorry for all the people about to be snowed in, but what can I say? Some of us plan not to be snowed in and move to areas where snow is infrequent.

A heron congregation, it must be ugly on the river

2010-12-18T19:57:00.000-08:00

This Saturday, December 18, has been a wet one here on the Crystal Coast.

We have hardly stirred from the warmth of our house. I did make two trips to the mail box which is a nice walk at our house. I just wish the grass was as green now as it is in the linked summer picture.

During our recent cold snap, our roses froze, and the only thing left green in the yard are the wild onions that I have been unable to kill. I think most of us humans have recovered from the unseasonably cold weather. I remain uncertain about both our birds and our fish.

There have been enough reports of dead fish from the really cold days that I assume we did have some scattered fish kills.

We have also had reports of someone killing pelicans recently. I hope they catch the low-life responsible, and put him away for life. Pelicans harm no one and add tremendously to the beauty of the area.

Beyond that the herons and gulls have been especially active in the gut behind our home near the White Oak River.

This morning a small corner of the water behind us seemed to be especially popular. I counted anywhere up to five white herons and two great blue herons in a fairly confined space at one time. A couple of sea gulls also kept circling but I never saw them land. Not far from the herons, there were some returning merganser ducks which I managed to capture in pictures on Friday.

The herons were there when I got up for breakfast, and they stayed all day. I did observe them successfully fishing so they were feeding. There were a few squabbles over territory, but we see that all the time. However, it is rare for our feathered friends to spend all day behind our house.

They usually will make a visit or two, and then sometime later in the day come back and spend the night in some of the sheltered trees around our marshes.

I don't know if the unusually cold water temperatures in the river have made the water behind our house a better feeding ground, or if it this is just a coincidence.

It was nice to have some feathered company on such a dreary day. We did enjoy our visitors.

The day was made even a little worse by the news that Emerald Isle is considering charging for beach parking. The plan is that parking at the Eastern or Western Regional lots will cost $5 or $10 per day, May through September and 8 AM to 5 PM.

That will certainly make beach walks a little less spontaneous.

Hopefully the economy will turn around soon and before the fees are implemented. We can always hope for some increased tax revenues flowing in from island businesses if the recently reported trend for people to travel more continues.

I suspect the island businesses will be the big losers if the city does start charging for parking.

Icing Penalty for the Crystal Coast

2010-12-08T20:08:00.000-08:00

When I wrote the post about a cold December, I knew it was going to get cold this month. I just had no idea that it was going to get this cold so quickly.

Yesterday we managed to make it up to 36F from our low of 23F. Our normal low is 39F, and our average high temperature in December is normally 58F. With those temperatures, the ice on the Gut leading to the White River has more than a skim of ice on it.

Tonight's predicted low of 23F will not help with the problem. The good news is that we are going to make it up to the forties tomorrow and even the fifties on Friday. We should manage to see the sixties on Sunday before we get hit by another wall of cold Canadian air.

When I ventured out to the grocery store tonight, there were only four cars there. It is hard to believe only ten days ago, I was sorry that I had left home for my beach walk with changing into shorts.

I had been looking forward to a reasonable December which would make our two cold months, January and February, not so bad. I know it is pretty silly to be complaining about the 34F temperature that I saw this evening on my drive to the grocery store.

However, you do adapt to your area's climate, and our area normally has a nice December. So this cold weather is not what we are accustomed to feeling. I guess this icing penalty is to make up for all those great days that we had during the fall.

We will survive because the sun warms this area up sometime in late February no matter what. That is only a couple of months away. I will spend some time planning which tomato plants that I am going to grow this year, and working on my HouseVision.us project.

I manage to never be bored. As the air begins to warm, we will take some walks on the Croatan Trails. Some of these pictures were taken there last February.

I am sure we will manage some winter beach walks just like last year, and by March we will regularly be on the beach.

I am planning major updates this winter to my Emerald Isle, Beaufort, and Swansboro travel guides.

Every winter, we also make trips to the Maritime Museum, the Aquarium, and the Core Sound Museum.

We have also been know to do a little winter fishing. There is plenty to do here on the Crystal Coast in the winter, and this winter my wife has announced plans to revamp her clam chowder recipe. I expect to be the official taster.

With all this on tap, I am not going to lose any sleep over a minor icing event. I expect to see some open water by tomorrow afternoon. If it happens, my spirits will go up even more.

A Cruel December on tap for the Crystal Coast?

2010-12-02T19:42:00.000-08:00

It must be time to hibernate. After Tuesday's high temperature of 76F and a Wednesday morning wake-up temperature of 68F, fresh chilled Canadian air seems to have found its way to the Southern Outer Banks. Still it has been a fall to remember. The weather until now has been great.

I still find it hard to believe that we were able to be on the water so late in the fall without any heavy coats. From my reading of the December forecasts, it looks like we might pay dearly for all that nice weather.

Of course with December arriving, the number of people visiting has dwindled, and even some of our permanent residents are off traveling for the holidays. When we visited Trattoria in Swansboro for lunch yesterday, we were the only people there eating at just after 1 PM. Today we had lunch at Andy's in the Emerald Plantation Shopping Center just before 2 PM. Once again we were the only folks enjoying the food.

Tuesday afternoon when we pulled into the Western Regional Beach Access to show some clients one of our beach accesses, there were no other cars parked there. Yesterday afternoon when the winds were starting to blow and the temperatures were starting to drop, there were only three other cars besides us.

Normally December is not a bad month for us. The folks at Weather.com have the average daily high temperature for the western part of Carteret County pegged at 58F. Looking at the fifteen day forecast from Accuweather, there is only one day in the next fifteen when we will be at or above the average high temperature. Nine of the days have us at a high temperature below 50F. There are also nine evenings when our low temperatures will be in the upper twenties. That is serious winter weather for the Crystal Coast. Even in January our average low temperature is 35F.

Of course things could be infinitely worse, much of Virginia and parts of North Carolina are going to see some snow this weekend. There is also a chance that almost all of Virginia and areas north of there plus half of North Carolina, and the northern parts of Georgia and South Carolina will have a white Christmas. That is not normal, and as someone born in the south, I feel qualified to say that.

The only silver lining to this cold weather is that long term winter forecast from Accuweather is "not much winter." Considering how much snow that I shoveled in the Virginia mountains last winter, I could use a break. Pictures from my first efforts to clear the big December storm to when I finally got a driveway open provide a good idea of how much snow I moved last year. It was an impressive storm, and I hope that I don't see another one like it for a while.

That snowy winter of 2009 is one of the reasons that my love for living on the Crystal Coast has gotten stronger. Snow rarely visits the Southern Outer Banks, and even when it comes, it almost never needs shoveling. For those in Buffalo and other areas suffering under a blanket of snow that requires snow blowers, my sympathies go out to you. My seventeen years in a Canadian snow belt and twenty years in the Virginia mountains have given me an understanding of your frozen pain. However, I have seen the warmth of the Carolina sun, and I can tell you that there are better ways to spend your winter than shoveling snow.

Once we get through this extraordinary cold of the next couple of weeks, I plan to come out of hibernation. Until then I will plan my activities accordingly and wear lots more clothing than we are accustomed to using here on the coast.

Stay warm, spring is not that far away.

Some different fall colors

2010-11-20T23:21:00.000-08:00

While fall along the coast does not have the magnificent canopy of colors that you often see in the fall in the mountains of North Carolina. We do have get some fall colors that are unique to the area.

I find that the clear fall skies and bright sun often combine for an unbeatable show of color. The picture at the top of the post was taken on the White Oak River on November 19 just after sunset.

The colors out on the river that evening were so stunning that it was hard to stop snapping pictures, and head back to my dock. As you can see from the album that I posted the colors were really amazing.

The river isn't the only source of wonderful colors in fall along the Southern Outer Banks. You also find some amazing displays of beauty on Bogue Sound and even on the beaches at sunset the light can be spectacular.

I also really enjoy the fall colors of the marshes. We just took a wonderful cruise through the marshes courtesy of Hammocks Beach State Park which was collecting Toys for Tots. The golden color of the marsh grasses against the backdrop of blue skies and beautiful waters is hard to beat.

We do get some color in our trees, and late in the evening when the sun is shining on them or even reflected in the water, you can almost imagine yourself in the mountains. Some maples stand out even in our pine dominated forests. Bradford pear trees also put on a colorful show here on the coast, and I even enjoy the contrast of dark berries against the yellow-orange color of crape myrtles as they prepare for winter.

Still it is hard to beat a nice sunset on the river for fall color. It puts a very colorful exclamation point on the day as it draws to a close.

Kayaking on the White Oak River

2010-11-14T20:48:00.000-08:00

Almost everyone has been pleased with our recent weather here on the Southern Outer Banks. We might quibble a little with the high surf that has made surf fishing difficult for a few days, but blue skies and temperatures in the mid-sixties are hard to beat in the middle of November. Saturday afternoon was a nearly perfect day. Sunday there was not a cloud in the sky, so there was no reason to expect anything but nice weather for an outdoor adventure.

After church and our grilled lunch, I briefly thought about leaning back in my easy chair and watching some football, but the weather was just too good to waste it on football. I decided that it would be a great time to go kayaking. Our home is right on Raymond's Gut which leads out to the White Oak. Saturday's boat ride in our skiff had taken care of my longing for flying across the water, so I was ready for some paddling.

We have a grassy area behind our bulkhead, and that is where I slide my kayak into the water. It is a little slope so when I am ready to exit the water, I usually have my wife pull my kayak in with our pickup truck. That way I don't get in trouble for wet or dirty clothes.

The water Sunday afternoon was creating some beautiful reflections of the blue sky so it was also a good time for some photographs. I loaded my trout rod, a couple of cameras, life vest, floating bag with cell phone into my kayak and headed out just after 2 PM.

The coast has been experiencing some very high tides, and one of the first things that I wanted to do was investigate an area in the marsh gras s that I can only get into when the tides are very high. I did not have any trouble getting in there Sunday afternoon, and as I suspected I found our great blue heron hiding back there. Of course he saw me before I saw him. I got a couple of pictures, but neither of them is good enough for public consumption.

It is a neat spot back in there. I love the gnarly old live oaks that surround the area. After checking out the blue heron's lair, I fished a little out in the channel before I paddled out to the river.

I made it out the Red Sixteen Buoy which is the buoy which marks the spot where on our trips back up the river that we turn to go back to Bluewater Cove. I did "check in" with Foursquare at Red Sixteen. I fully expect to continue being the mayor of Red Sixteen on Foursquare. It will be a hard spot for someone to dislodge me, especially with winter coming.

The picture at the top of the post was taken just beyond Red Sixteen looking towards Swansboro. I did a little fishing out in the river, but the current and winds were strong enough that each time I made a cast, I ended up having to paddle for five minutes to get back to where I started.

There were only a couple of distant fishing boats on the river so it was relatively quiet as is usually the case. I finally gave up on the fish and started making movies. I have a friend who is unable to kayak so I thought he might enjoy the feeling of a movie instead of just static shots.

Before I knew it, time had slipped by, and it was four PM. My wife was due to take our cat to the vet for some medicine before 5 PM so I focused on paddling myself back to the dock. I found my wife waiting for me by our pickup. She had gotten carried away with the good weather and was cleaning out my pickup. Hopefully I will still be able to find everything when I need it.

The water was so high, it didn't take much of a tug to get me onshore. I had a great time, got some exercise, and managed to relax a little. That is hard to beat.

I posted three short YouTube videos, Kayaking on the White Oak, Bluewater Cove, and Headed Home.

You get a real feel for being in a large coastal river with the first one, Kayaking on the White Oak. The Bluewater Cove one is just my kayak riding the currents and wind back into the main body of Raymond's Gut. My favorite YouTube one out of this batch is the final one, Headed Home. I did some fancy paddling with one hand in that video.

I hope the weather stays this way for a while. I would love to get some more kayaking in before it gets too chilly to sit in a kayak. If you have never been out on a coastal river in kayak it is well worth trying. Where I do most of my kayaking, the White Oak is nearly two miles wide. If it is your first trip, you might want to wait for a calmer day. Sometimes there is hardly even a ripple in the water. I really enjoy sunset kayak trips on the White Oak. Early in the morning and just before sunset are the best times to catch calm waters.

Quiet on the river

2010-11-01T20:12:00.000-07:00

When I got up this morning, it was cool and windy. Twenty-four hours certainly made a difference in the temperature. My blue jeans added some welcome warmth as I wandered out to the get the morning newspaper.

Sunday night, October 31, I took a boat ride on the river in my standard summer uniform of shorts and tee shirt. I was a little cool coming back up river at just under thirty miles per hour, but when I was idling around waiting for the sun to get behind the trees, I was fine.

While it warmed up nicely the next day, it was still somewhat cooler than Halloween evening. I spent most of the day after Halloween catching up with things after our recent trip to Virginia. Each time I come back from Northern Virginia, I am reminded that I made a conscious choice to live somewhere that traffic does not come close to gridlock on a regular basis.

We were at Tyson's Corner Shopping Center on Friday afternoon before Halloween. My wife wanted to drive by the apartment that I shared with our grown children for a couple of years. It is just north of Tyson's Corner on Route 123 which seems to have grown to about twelve lanes. It was about 4 PM when we drove by our old spot, and it was clear than the southbound lanes of Route 123 were not moving. I remembered a back way over to the Toll Road so we escaped unharmed though we did have to get off of the Toll Road an exit early because of everyone rubber necking an accident.

We hung around the Northern Virginia area until about 2 PM on Saturday and then headed back to North Carolina. It wasn't long before we were in stop and go traffic on Interstate 95 for about 20 minutes just north of Fredericksburg, but that was our only hitch on the trip home. We stopped for breaks a couple of times and once for gas. Even with that, we passed through the intersection of Routes 24 and 58 near the Emerald Isle Bridge at 8:10 PM, just a few minutes over six hours after we left Reston, Va.

While we love visiting our children in Northern Virginia, we have no desire to live in a spot where you avoid going out on weekends for fear of traffic. While we might skip visiting the grocery stores here on the Crystal Coast for a few hours on each of about six or seven weekends during the summer, most of the time we go wherever we want, whenever we decide that we need to go.

I had also forgotten how small the parking spaces are in Northern Virginia. Here on the Southern Outer Banks our parking is designed for big trucks, and we even make accommodation for those pulling boats.

Of course if you need to buy something, there is hardly any place better than Northern Virginia. The malls in the area have almost any store known to mankind. Actually the women have heard of almost all the stores, and like most men, I am clueless about most of them. I did enjoy LL Beans, Levengers, and of course the Apple Store. I was amazed but not surprised that the Apple Store has done away with cash registers. The employees have a gadget that swipes your credit card, and then they can email your receipt to your smart phone.

Besides shopping, Northern Virginia has some very nice restaurants. We managed to eat at Sweet Water Grille, Coastal Flats, and Chicken Out which was one of the places I would often run by after work when I was working out of the Reston, Virginia Apple office. I also got to make a trip to Whole Foods which is my favorite grocery store. Where else can you find an ostrich egg when you need one?

Every place has its pluses and minuses, but at this stage in our lives, the Southern Outer Banks is the right spot for us. Being able to drop a boat in the water for a sunset cruise and be back at the house in ten or fifteen minutes is not that unusual here on the coast. It is a great way to soothe your soul, and I use it often.

A just-before-dusk trip on the water is how I got the picture in this post. The evening after Halloween I had to wear blue jeans and take a jacket, but it was still nice out on the water. In fact it was even more peaceful than it was the previous night. Of course the light is always a little different, and I got some great photos.

The feeling of peace and quiet that you get on an uncrowded. wide coastal river at sunset is hard to duplicate when you get near major populations centers. Access to water is one of the main reasons that we are here on the Southern Outer Banks. Of course a climate favorable taking boat rides in November is pretty good reason in its own right.

Boat gridlock is also not something we worry about on the White Oak River or out in Bogue Inlet. And we have some mighty fine small, family owned restaurants just around the corner even if they are mostly local secrets.

Perhaps A Great October Day At The Beach On Tap

2010-10-23T19:51:00.000-07:00

I would have to say that the weather forecast for this coming Wednesday looks great. While my Latin is a little rusty, I believe it would be a great day to "Carpe Litus" or seize the beach. To see the weather folks calling for a high of 81F and a low of 70F with partly cloudy skies on October 27 is something that should excite us all.

While we have enjoyed a mild fall, and the predictions are for a mild winter, an eighty degree beach day at the end of October calls for some sort of celebration or at least a long walk on the beach.

In fact I am organizing my week around trying to enjoy some of that warmth on this coming Wednesday. We recently made a trip to the Virginia mountains. I left the coast in my usual uniform of shorts, tee shirt, and sandals. We were fine all through North Carolina, but I knew that we were in a different world when I got out to put gas in the car in Martinsville, Va. The temperature had dropped to fifty four degrees.

The next morning I was running around turning on the furnace, and before we went out on some errands, I had changed to blue jeans, long sleeved tee shirt, and sneakers. Two days later the morning temperature had dropped to 35F, and I was wearing a sweat shirt.

With that fresh in my memory, I plan to soak up all the warmth that I can in the remaining days of October. On Monday, October 17, we had a great walk on the beach in early afternoon. There were plenty of people out there enjoying the late fall warmth. I am hoping for as good or better day on October 27.

Later in the week of October 17, it was warm enough for a boat ride in shorts and tee shirt. With the water still holding close to seventy degrees, we can hope for an extended warm period that might ease our transition into the winter months.

We never know what winter is going to bring or any other season for that matter. However, what we know is that the Coast is warmer than the Mountains and Piedmont in the winter. The South is also almost certainly warmer than the North during the winter, though last winter was pretty close.

As they say the devil is in the details. I have yet to have need of a down coat here on the coast. My winter shoes are tennis shoes, and I only keep gloves in the car for our frequent trips back to the Virginia Mountains. There are no snow shovels on our coastal property.

We have seen some ice on the "Gut" which run out to the White Oak. That water behind the house get a skim of ice a few times each winter. Usually it melts by nine AM, but we did have one stretch last winter where the ice held on in places for a few days. There were rumors of an unusually cold winter back in the late eighties when the river froze over, but I never saw any pictures to confirm it.

I do know that I shoveled a lot of snow in Virginia last winter, and I have yet to shovel any snow in North Carolina. We did miss the brief snow storm last winter on the coast, but I was told the snow melted off the driveways before anyone had time to consider shoveling it. That was a stark contrast to the situation of our friends who live near Pulaski, Va. and had snow on their long country driveway for over six weeks.

I will take that eighty degree weather on Wednesday, enjoy it, and use the memories of it to fend off those first cool days of the coastal winter. I am hoping that the long range forecasts are correct, and that most of this winter's snows will be from New Jersey to the north. At least they have the equipment to handle it.

We are much better equipped to handle visitors on the beach than we are to take care of snow on the beach.

Let us hope any snow we see this year on the beach is just a dusting.

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A Southern Outer Banks Fall on the Water

2010-10-20T12:06:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons that we moved to the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina was to enjoy the area's beautiful waters.

Before our move, our investigations covered a lot of territory, but we eventually narrowed our search to Carteret County for some good reasons. The area met our needs and offered us the opportunity to be on the water at a reasonable price.

I spent our first winter here examining our boating options. In early summer 2007 we bought a boat, and we have been enjoying the area's waters ever since.

We actually don't take many long trips mostly because there is plenty of water to enjoy within a few minutes of our house. Part of my dream was to be in a place where it was possible to continue working but be able to grab a few minutes on the water when the weather conditions are right.

The nice thing is that we can boat most of the year. While an early summer morning trip out Bogue Inlet is a definite delight, there is nothing wrong with a quick trip like I took with a couple of neighbors on Tuesday October 19, 2010.

We all had some chores to do in the morning so it was noon before we pulled away from the dock behind our home in Bluewater Cove.

The boating weather was less than perfect because of some surprise winds, but it was warm and already almost eighty degrees. We have enjoyed great fall weather this year so having a warm day in late October was just continuing a pattern.

We spent about three and one half hours on the water and really enjoyed ourselves. Of course we were still all dressed in the uniform of the coast, shorts and tee shirts.

With a beautiful coastal river at my back door, the ICW only ten minutes from my dock, and Bogue Inlet less than twenty minutes from the house, there is plenty to explore. We sometimes wander the waters behind Bear Island-Hammocks beach. The Point near Emerald Isle is one of our favorite haunts.

A couple of times each summer I venture out on the river to catch a sunrise. It is not unusual for me to go out three or four times in a week just to catch a sunset on the White Oak River.

If it sounds like being on the water is a big part of our life, that is no accident.

Of course the best time of year on land or water here on the Southern Outer Banks is fall.

Sometimes that last gasp of summer seems to stretch for too long, but this year fall came as expected

One of the reasons the best of seasons is fall is that it is a time when you can fully enjoy the waters of the Crystal Coast with no crowds unless you happen to run into a school of spots that have been found by the fishermen. Also there is no lingering August humidity to cause heat problems during the day.

Fall makes for some memorable afternoons on the water here along the Southern Outer Banks. If you have never visited us in the fall check out my Swansboro, Emerald Isle, or Beaufort travel guides.

There are still some weeks to enjoy a visit before Jack Frost finds us. The fifteen day forecast shows only one day where the evening temperature drops to 39F. Eleven of the days have temperatures in the seventies, and I see at least one day has a forecast that we will make the eighties.

Come on down and enjoy our fall and find out how much fun you can have on the water is this time of year.

Friday at the Dock

2010-10-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of pleasures that come with living here on North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks.

One of them happens to be the friendly people than inhabit our shores. This past week was a really busy one for me. I was juggling a number of things including home repair, yard maintenance, changes to the listing of our home in Virginia, modifying websites, showing property, monitoring repairs on a client's property, putting the finishing touches on the software for our new small business, and getting ready for a presentation on social networking at our local board of Realtors®.

On top of that I took delivery of my new I5 iMac and got it up and working at full speed while dealing with a problem with our boat. Certainly having friends and neighbors to lean on made all of this much easier. Having your boat not running is a crisis in a world where boats are part of life and the fall fishing season is just around the corner. A fishing buddy took the problem of fixing the boat off my hands.

I was able to focus on the other items on my plate. By yesterday afternoon around 4 PM everything was done except putting the center console back in place on the boat. I did not do much other than hold it up at an angle while Brian, my fishing buddy, put the sealant under the edge of the console and around the screws.

Still it was nice to see it finished and reflect back on all the accomplishments from the previous week. My presentation on Social Networking went very well. I even recovered from the jammed copier at work which kept me from doing flyers exactly as I had wanted.

Standing in front of crowd with my MacBook hooked to a projector put me back into the world that I lived in for so long at Apple and later as a consultant for the National Lambda Rail. Over the years, I have presented to some very high level folks whose names I will avoid dropping. It is safe to say that I thrive in front of a group. Doing presentations became second nature while at Apple. I even had to fly out to Cupertino to do a few.

While I really enjoyed doing the Social Networking Presentation, it occurred to me as we were sitting on the dock yesterday "helping" with the final touches that would bring our skiff back to life, I would really love to stand up before a group and talk about our Southern Outer Banks or what is often called the Crystal Coast.

Like most of my presentations, I would start with some history, possibly discussing how the area developed with close ties to the land and sea. I might even mention the 56th Annual Mullet Festival which was last weekend in Swansboro. The festival tradition is alive and well here on the Crystal Coast.

Then I would likely talk about the present. While like most areas, we would like to see a stronger economy, we did not boom as much as some areas south of here, so when things deflated we did not have as far to go. We still have at most a handful of homes in financial trouble. On top of that our area has seen many new businesses in the last three or four years. Construction has started on a new Hampton Inn in Swansboro, and there was an announcement that Dunkin Donuts will build in Cedar Point.

At the same time Emerald Isle has extended its bike paths and improved the accessibility of their beaches. Both of the big regional beach accesses have handicapped accessible platforms for viewing the beach and ramps which make it easier for all of us older folks to enjoy the beaches.

The area has also seen a number of small locally owned restaurants open and thrive. I really enjoy ChowdaHeads on Emerald Isle and Nicky's of Swansboro located between the White Oak River bridges.

When you add that to the Best Buy, TJ Maxx, Olive Garden, Buffalo Wild Wings, Starbucks, Harris Tweeter, and Panera Bread that have been built in Morehead City over the last few years, you get the picture of slow but steady growth.

In my real estate world I can feel some slight hint of recovery. Three homes have sold in our small subdivision of Bluewater Cove.

While there are some resale homes available, there is only one brand new home left on the market in our subdivision. Steady growth looks really good when you compare it to some of the areas of the country which have not done so well.

Last weekend I hosted a client from California. Her stories of the economic troubles of their California Valley made Carteret County sound pretty good.

A lot of what appeals to me about this area is the mix between the old and the new. We can have a wonderful place like Clyde Phillips Seafood at the same time construction is starting on a new concrete pier on Emerald Isle. We can enjoy a wonderful small restaurant like the Fairway in Cape Carteret or the food and tradition at T&W's Oyster House while knowing that there is a brand new Olive Garden twenty minutes away.

I can shop in a modern Harris Teeter or Lowe's Grocery store and stop on my way home at Winberry's Produce Stand for whatever local delights I might find including Bogue Sound Watermelons in October.

As is my custom in presentations, I would try to shed some light on the future. I would probably start with a discussion about how I think the 158,000 acres of the Croatan National Forest and the 56 miles of the Cape Lookout National Seashore give us lots of hope for the future.

I might point to the 1778 Ringware home in Swansboro as a point of hope that the past and future can continue to co-exist here on the Crystal Coast. The rebirth of Beaufort would likely get a bullet or two in my presentation. The ongoing efforts to protect the wonderful White Oak River would also get a slide.

My talk would include some mention of the protections now in place to prevent out of control development like you see when you cross the border into South Carolina on your way to Myrtle Beach. I suspect that I would mention the wonderful reputation and national awards that have come to the Carteret County Schools.

I would probably close with a recommendation that people visit the site which I maintain to showcase information and pictures about the area. As my parting shot I would suggest that the only way to appreciate the area is to visit it.

I would then show this picture from last weekend and let it speak for itself.