Thanksgiving Weekend

We are now at Lake Norman staying with my brother Rick and his wife Denise in their beautiful home overlooking the lake. There was no place nearby to park the motor home so we parked on the horse farm of their friend, Carole Earnhardt. While we were there we got to watch her daughter break a young pony that had never been ridden. It is the first time in four months that we have not slept in our own bed. Next week Nanc and I both have birthdays and, as a gift, Rick and Denise had a masseuse come to the house for 90 minute massages for each of us. Wow, talk about relaxing, Annette worked out all the kinks. For Thanksgiving the four of us went out to dinner. We had a wonderful buffet at Upstream in Charlotte with all the traditional dishes plus a whole table of fresh shellfish and shrimp. It was a great day with good company, good food and no dishes to clean up. We really do have much to be thankful for. On Friday we went to Lowes Motor Speedway and got to drive on the track, which is only allowed the day after Thanksgiving each year. It was quite a hoot. They put about 20 cars at a time on the track and you are permitted to drive around as fast as you like as long as you don't pass the pace car. We got the CRV up to 80 mph (woohoo) going through the high banked turns. It was wild with everything from sports cars to mini vans driving the three laps together. On Saturday the four of us went to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville to see the house decorated for the holidays. We took the audio tour which gave a lot more information than the tour with just the pamphlet. We were there several years ago and this time much more of the house was open to the public. The holiday decorations were beautiful but, unfortunately, no interior photography is allowed. If you are into estate tours this is definitely one you don't want to miss. It is spectacular.

A Sharp Weekend

We had a great weekend with the Sharp's, Mike, Sherri, Brian, Lori & Andrew and Tom & Darlene Dufalla, Lori's parents. We visited, did some touring, played games and helped Brian & Lori move into their new house. We toured Beaufort, an old seaport. There are several original houses including the Hammock House where Blackbeard the pirate is said to have stayed. We also went to the North Carolina Maritime Museum that has a lot of artifacts from the area and a workshop where they build small boats to keep the traditional methods alive. The place we found to be the most interesting was the Old Burying Ground that has graves dating back to the 1700's. One of the graves is the girl in the barrel on whose grave people continue to leave tributes. The story is that her mother only allowed her father to take her to England if he promised to return with her. When she died on the ship, rather than the usual burial at sea, her father bought a barrel of rum from the captain in which to place her body in order to preserve it. Thus, he could keep his promise to bring her back. Next we went to Fort Macon which was built in the 1800's. During the Civil War the local militia took and held the fort for a year before Union forces led by General Burnside (of sideburns fame) recaptured it. It was not used again until the Spanish American War after which it became a state park. During the Depression the CCC totally refurbished the fort for the state. When WWII started and the German U-boats were sinking ships off the North Carolina coast the army once again occupied it with a Coast Artillery Unit. Since that time it is once again a state park. It is very well preserved and is worth the visit.

Rollin n Rockin

On Thursday we crossed Pamlico Sound from Ocracoke to Cedar Island on a 2.5 hour ferry ride with 40 mph winds and 6 to 8 foot waves. It was so windy we had to be very careful even opening the door of the motor home which was travelling backwards. For most of the trip the ferry was heading into the wind and waves so there was not a lot of motion. For the last half hour the boat turned and sailed across the waves. This caused it to roll back and forth quite a bit. Looking out the door window from the drivers seat the horizon would disappear both above and below the window. We were very happy to get into the harbor. On the drive after landing I had the signal I have been waiting for to show I am officially retired, we had to stop the motor home for a school bus. We are going to spend the weekend with Brian & Lori Sharp and Mike & Sherri are going to be there. We are looking forward to getting together with all of them.

Ocracoke

We are spending a couple days on Ocracoke Island. To get here we took the motor home on a forty minute ferry ride from Hatteras Island. The island is almost entirely national seashore except for the southern most point where the village is built around Silver Lake. We have been here in the summer when you can hardly move because of the number of people but at this time of the year the streets are empty. We walked and drove around and enjoyed the great weather and scenery. Driving along the northern end of the island the dunes are gone and you are very close the the ocean. Nearer the village the beaches are very wide. We saw at least a dozen dolphin in the water close to shore. They were jumping out of the water and circling to feed on the fish. If you look closely you can see a fin and the swirling of the water. We also saw the Ocracoke ponies that arrived here from ship wrecks along the coast in the 1500 & 1600's. At one time they roamed freely but have been penned because of the increase in traffic. We visited to the lighthouse which is the oldest in North Carolina. The campground is beside the British Cemetery where British sailors whose bodies washed ashore are buried. Most of these are from WWII when they patrolled the Atlantic coast looking for German U-boats. The U-boats sank so many ships in the area it was named Torpedo Alley.

Still having a HI Time

We are on Hatteras Island until this Tuesday then we will move south to Ocracoke for a couple days. Next weekend we are going to visit Brian and Lori Sharp before heading to Lake Norman for Thanksgiving with my brother Rick and his wife Denise. We made our first reservation for Florida at Cape Canaveral to see the shuttle launch in early December. The weather here has been much cooler with highs in the 50's but it does not get much lower than that at night. It's been great being here for a month experiencing the off season. We have taken long walks, fished, and just chilled out. It has been interesting seeing how the weather has changed over the month and watching the ocean. We started out with beach weather then we had the "hard blow" and now we have cooler temps. Now when I go fishing I wear a coat. We drove north to Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge to see the birds and also saw how much sand was blown across the road in Rodanthe during the storm. The first house on the left in the picture had waves breaking under it and the road was also closed for a day. We did have visitors this week when Georgie and Tom came down for three days. Having this personal mail delivery is really pretty nice. We took long walks, went out to dinner, played cards and had a great time just visiting. It was very comfortable with four of us in the motor home. The pictures are just a few random shots of the island.

Just a Hard Blow

We are a having a visit from NOEL. We always wanted to see what a hurricane was like but we did not expect to have one in November in our motor home. Actually, just the fringe of the storm is hitting the Outer Banks with winds up to 40 miles per hour and almost no rain. We took a drive at high tide to see what effect the wind was having on the surf. We did encounter a sanddrift near the cape that forced us to turn around. You can see that some people actually were having fun in the wind. We stopped at the Outer Banks Motel where we have stayed many times. In the office we talked to Miss Barbara, who has worked there for forty years. When we asked her about the storm she just smiled and said this was "just a hard blow". We were really impressed that the power stayed on for the first 18 hours of the storm but it just went out about a half hour ago and the owner of the campground came around to tell us a main line was down on Oregon Inlet and it would be a while before power would be restored because of the continuing wind. For a blog first I shot a short video that I hope will show what the wind is like.