Still Time To Make Summer Memories

It is August the first, and the summer of 2010 is slipping away from us. Like most folks I have been so busy that sitting back and really enjoying summer has been a challenge. However, I am a hardcore summer person so you can be sure I have already created a few indelible memories that can keep me warm through the winter. Even more important is that there is still plenty of time left to have some fun and create some more of those memories that last well beyond the winter. I can still remember the boating trip from last summer when my youngest daughter finally fell in love with the Crystal Coast. An even older memory is our trip to Cape Lookout five years ago.  You have to do that trip differently now. Once you start the process of digging up memories, they tend to flow freely. The Cape Lookout trip reminded me of a wonderful fishing trip to Beaufort in the fall of 2005. Making memories that last is easy in a place like the Crystal Coast.

With so many wonderful things to do here at the beach, it is sometimes hard to choose. A good rule of thumb is that if you have never tried something before, you will likely remember your first attempt much more vividly than you will remember doing what you have always done.

A few weeks ago I took some friends out in our boat. It was a holiday weekend so I thought that we would just go for a short ride on the White Oak River. When I figured out that my friends had never been up the river beyond Stella, I decided that they needed to see the river above the point where all the homes disappear. We made it up the river ten miles beyond Stella. By the time we came back down the river and took a run down to the Intracoastal and then home to Raymond's Gut, we had gone about thirty-eight miles. From the comments from my friends, I suspect they will remember that ride for a long time.

We have made lots of special memories with our granddaughter who will turn two next weekend. She had her first birthday party here on the coast last summer. Then there was the time we took her to the beach for the first time. I can still see her standing in the waves with her grandmother holding one hand and her aunt holding her other. We will be creating a whole new set of memories when we host her second birthday party next weekend.

Some memories are priceless like the time one of our daughter's visiting dogs got a little too close to a fiddler crab. The dog weighs nearly one hundred pounds. The crab latched onto the dog's lip. That caused the dog to run towards my daughter who could only see this creature of the deep dangling from her dog's lip. Our daughter started screaming and running from her dog. The faster she ran, the harder her dog tried to catch her. Fortunately, her older sister tackled the dog and removed the crab. By the time the crab was removed, we were all doubled over with laughter.

There is plenty of room on the beach to write your own memories in the sand. You can create a memory in an afternoon. Your memories can be anything from a group kayak trip to a leisurely ride over to Hammocks Beach on the state's pontoon boat. Even a family outing to play miniature golf or walk the docks in Beaufort can turn into a memory makes you smile each time it slides into your consciousness.

The important thing is to seize the opportunity to make some wonderful summer memories while there is still time left. The summer of 2010 will only roll around once for us, and even now there are just a few weeks left before it will be time to create some of those fall fishing memories for this year.

Now that I am thinking about fishing, my mind is pulling up my first fishing trip on the Point with my Uncle Austin. I think it was the summer of 1969. We did not catch much beyond a horseshoe crab and one bluefish, but I am pretty sure that was the trip that sealed my fate and eventually made a Crystal Coast resident out of me.

Both the memory and the reality are pretty nice on that one.