Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Enchanted Fourth

 
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Boy! We had a stupid great time at the beach this Fourth. You know how you go somewhere for a few days and you come home more tired than when you left? Well not this time. We didn’t do a whole lot AT ALL but soak in the sun and the beauty around us. I heard everyone talking about how they’d never seen the water more clear. It almost had that blue hue like you see in the Caribbean and it was like that the whole time we were there.
 

We really lucked up with some great weather too though. Only on the last day there did the temps creep into the 90’s. The nights were cool and crisp, even dipping into the 50’s a time or two. Grace, Nathan and I left after lunch on Thursday. Our friend, David Gresham called earlier in the week and offered up his spot in Salter Path for us to stay. He’d been persistent for the past year or so saying how we really needed to go there and check it out. He couldn’t have been more right either. You walk out of his townhouse , into a small fenced in patio (with sadly, NO outdoor shower…we’ll fix that!) and then into a courtyard area. You walk past the pool (unless you feel the urge to jump in!) and up onto a huge deck overlooking the beach. There’s benches there covered by large umbrellas that you can hang out on or steps down to where all the hotties are hanging out on the sand, and there were LOTS of hotties around too (away from the public accesses and closer to where the rich folks have homes…just my theory). Nathan and I would nudge each other and nod over their way constantly. The ocean was like a lake most of our time there, and the temperature was perfect. Since the humidity was down, there was no real emergency to get in the water other than it just felt great. Being that close to the house also made it easy for bathroom breaks and beer runs. We found their beach umbrella in the closet and from that point on it was over. There was nothing much keeping us from setting up shop, parking our asses right there on the beach and watching the world go ‘round.
 

There was lots to see too…I mean, besides the hotties. We did the usual looking for shells on occasion, but even just sitting there we’d see pelicans fly by, a loggerhead stick his head out of the water or further out we’d see dolphins swim past. Once as Grace and I were on a walk, I happened to look up just in time to see (only about 40 or so yards out) a dolphin jump straight out of the water and back in, like he was training for Sea World or something. It was wild. They were really frisky that day. Just after that we saw one inside a wave as if to be surfing. We were always on the lookout for fins sticking outta the water. It is so cool to see them in their natural habitat. Late in the afternoons, we’d have to pry ourselves off the beach. It was just too beautiful to leave. But we’d have to start thinking about silly things like dinner and what to do that night. We threatened to leave one night to see a friend play a local club but thought better of it with the police in their Fourth of July DUI crackdown mode. Sunday we went for a drive to Cedar Island, near where Blackbeard was killed. I had never been out there and was curious to see what was beyond the popular beach areas of our great state. It wasn’t long before I realized why civilization stopped where it did. We saw lots of swamp land and water and not much else. It was beautiful, but at times it felt a little like being on the moon!
 
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Occasionally, we’d go through a small town like Bettie, Davis or Stacey but we never saw much affluence, most folks made their living by either shrimping or fishing. Sunday night, after another beautiful afternoon on the beach, we watched fireworks over at Barry and Blair’s hot spot near Fort Macon. The deck on top of their place makes it easy to see ALL of the displays for miles around. Every town in the area has their own show with the granddaddy of them all just across the sound at Morehead City.
 

Some REAL fireworks sparked as we were leaving the park though. Some drunk walking his dog was staggering around with a wine glass in his hand and as we past him in the car he yelled at Grace and told her she needed to slow down. She was sitting on top of a speed bump at the time almost motionless waiting for him to figger out which foot to use next. “Excuse me!” she snapped back. “You were going over 25 miles an hour!” he quipped followed by “You want me to call the cops?!” “I wish you would!” Grace yelled back. There was more heat exchanged before we finally just drove off and left him to the rest his miserable life. Evidently, he’d been causing trouble all over the place and I think was eventually asked to leave. We dreaded Monday, that was leaving day. We put it off as long as we could. We’d go inside and clean for a while, then go back to the beach for an hour or so. Back and forth we went until we could put it off no longer. Finally, after 4pm we got in the car and left. With the weather the way it was and the water the way it was, there would be no other way to describe our long weekend as anything but “enchanted”. It was hard to not cry thinking about losing all of this to some greedy oil company. It makes you really hurt for those people in the Gulf and wonder if and when it will come and destroy our beautiful coastline.
 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I spent the weekend near the "public access"....Glad to know where the hotties were at, I sure didn't see any....

Anonymous said...

You passed within 300 yards of where my mama lives, at Snug Harbor Home in Sea Level. Lot's of the folks down there now go to Cherry Point to work at the Base, since fishing and such are not what they used to be.

Harry Simmons

Moose said...

My maternal grandfather had a fishing cabin on Portsmouth Island in the 50's and early 60's. The private ferry service in Davis would take us over. That was the first beach I ever saw when I was a kid. That is a neat area.

Oh... I've been to Harry's mama's house in Sea Level on several occasions.

Moose... reporting from Colington Island, OBX!