Winter in the Cove

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.