Once a Reston resident

Summer in the city

Summer in the city obviously looks nothing like this beach picture.  If it did, we would all be flocking to the city.

There are a couple of things that I remember as being nice during a summer in Reston.  One was that traffic thinned enough to be noticed.

The other was city life itself seemed to back off from its normal intensity just a little.  Of course the morning rush hour was still there on Wiehle, and there was still plenty of traffic for most people's tastes.

It is hard not to say that there are better places to be than the Washington Metro area in summer. The truth is that almost no one wants to be in the city during the summer.  To measure the truth of the statement, just get on one of the main roads out of town on a Friday before a weekend.

I used to try to leave my Reston office on Thursdays during the summer just to stay off Interstates 66 & 81 on Fridays.  I doubt it has gotten any better in the five years since I stopped working in Reston.  I know that during our spring visit, I was impressed with the amount of road upheaval.  To an outsider it might look like the guts are being changed in the area's infrastructure.  However, they didn't live through the mixing bowl construction.

My theory on summer in the city is simple.  Streets, buildings, and concrete all absorb heat and then radiate it at night.  In spite of Reston having more trees than many urban areas, it is impossible to escape the heat.  Of course all the trees help stop any thought of cooling breezes.

Having the buildings act as a giant heat sink could be useful in winter, but unfortunately I don't think it works that way. All the concrete seems to absorb cold and intensify the cold during the winter.

So it is that everyone looks forward to getting out of the city in the summer.  People just want to get away from the heat, roads, people, and traffic.  Ideally you want to find a lake, beach or some body of water, and Reston's manmade lakes really don't count.

Virginia doesn't have a lot of lakes so there is no quick escape like Lake Norman provides for Charlotte.  Of course there is the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River, but somehow a real escape seems to demand a little more travel and a little less traffic.

Crossing over to Maryland's Eastern Shore and perhaps heading to Rehoboth Beach or one of the other Delaware beaches is an option that can be done in under 3.5 hours if there is no traffic according to Google maps.  Taking the trip to four hours can get you to Virginia Beach, but it is almost as urban as Reston.

About four hours will get you to Smith Mountain Lake near Roanoke. Four hours will also get you to Kerr/Buggs Island Lake which is the middle of lot of Virginia countryside.   All those venues have their advocates, and they certainly have the advantage of relatively short driving times.

A couple of more hours, give or take a few minutes, will get you to some serious North Carolina beaches.  Most people from the Reston area are familiar with Corolla, Duck, Kitty Hawk, and Nags Head. Add another hour and you can be on Hatteras Island waiting in line for the ferry to Ocracoke.

Depending on the traffic gods, you can probably get to North Carolina's lesser known Crystal Coast in about six hours.  My wife and I have made it from the Wiehle entrance on the toll road to the stoplight by the Emerald Isle bridge in six hours at least a couple of times even with the inevitable traffic in Fredericksburg.

I won't pretend to know about Rehoboth Beach or any of the other Delaware beaches, but I do know the North Carolina beaches very well.  I grew up going to them, and never stopped visiting until I managed to find a spot near the beach where I could live.

The area south of Ocracoke Island is sometimes called the Southern Outer Banks.  Cape Lookout National Seashore is part of the area and is only accessible by boat.  There are 56 miles or so of wild isolated beaches there.

The real attraction of the Southern Outer Banks is the Crystal Coast which stretches from Beaufort, NC to Swansboro, NC.  The heart of the area is a strand of beach which runs from Fort Macon State Park near Atlantic to the Point of Emerald Isle. 

The area has about twenty one miles of beautiful beach with a population density of about half of what you would find in one of the Delaware beaches. The area is even on the doorstep of the 158,000 acres of the Croatan National Forest.  The National Forest and the National Seashore keep the area from becoming just another over-developed beach area.

There are a wide variety of accomodations available on the shore, but the majority of what you will find are single family homes available for weekly rentals.  There is one small oceanfront motel in Emerald Isle and a couple of larger ones up by Atlantic Beach.  There are some scattered condo complexes, but nothing like the wall to wall highrises in Myrtle Beach.

The area differs greatly from Myrtle Beach.  The main activities on the Crystal Coast are walking on the beach, fishing, boating, or visiting some of the area's historical sites. It is a peaceful area where stress is not part of the daily equation.

The Crystal Coast gets its name from the crystal clear waters that are usually found on its shores.  I have visited beaches from Assateague Island all the way to Myrtle Beach, and I think some of the best beaches on the east coast are within the town limits of Emerald Isle.  I have walked all the miles of beach within Emerald Isle's corporate boundaries at least three times since spring, and I am always amazed at the beauty of the beaches, and how there always seems to be space to enjoy the beach.

One of the unique things about the area is that the beaches face the south.  Having the ocean to the south instead of the east is a little different, but it has its advantages especially during the cooler months.

If summer in Reston has finally gotten to you, or if the 104F or 106F high temperatures in the forecast towards the end of the third week of July 2011 have you considering a quick exit from town, you can check out our forecast temperatures for Emerald Isle.

The water has been warm enough for dipping in since the end of May so it is nearly perfect now.  You can check water temperatures for much of the east coast at this link.  You will find our surf temperatures in the mid-eighties which is just enough to cool you off and to keep those super hot temperatures at bay.

Our area also has the advantage of being a great area for boating whether you choose the sound or one of the big coastal rivers.  Our traffic even on July 4th doesn't really compare to what anyone from Reston sees on a weekly basis so you can drop that worry because we are already past the season's peak traffic.

If you are planning on visiting, you can read lots more about the area at my Emerald Isle Travel Guide.

It is a unique area which has a real year round population.  So while you get the advantage of being at the beach, you don't have to give up any modern services. 

If you are a regular to Northern Outer Banks, you will be surprised at how much vegetation surrounds the homes in our beach communities and how laid back life is here on the Crystal Coast.

You might just the discover why the almost secret beaches that native North Carolinians have been enjoying for years are such a great place to live and visit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making progress on spring

Some years Northern Virginia, including Reston, goes direct from spring to summer, and then there is 2011.  Reston has seen some temperatures in the eighties followed by lows in thirties, and then there have been some days when the temperature did not get above fifty degrees Fahrenheit.

It has been a spring with even more changeable weather than normal. While April 16 will likely be another day when Reston is stuck in the fifties and gets very wet, it looks like the week of April 18 will be more reasonable with temperatures in the upper sixties heading to the mid seventies for at least a day.  More importantly the lows will be in the mid-fifties which will help greatly with the progress of spring plants.

While I have spent my share of springs in Northern Virginia, I prefer spring a litter farther south.  This year I have been able to watch spring unfold across Southwest Virginia, Central North Carolina, and NC's Crystal Coast. It has been an especially nice spring in North Carolina.

We saw the peak of spring in the Charlotte area on April 6 and in the last nine days we have watched spring roll across the coastal plains.  The weather on the coast has been close to unbelievable.  Our heat pumps haven't run for the last ten or eleven days.  I have had fun playing what I call the heat pump game. Our dogwoods have been in full bloom for a week, and now the azaleas are hitting their peak as the wisteria starts to fade.

We have had more than a few days in the eighties.  Fortunately some fog has shown up just when we needed cooling down. The fog just proved my point that Carolina fog is more useful than Canadian fog. I have managed to get out on the water in our skiff and to do a couple of early kayaking trips. We have had some especially beautiful spring mornings.

The weather has even warmed up enough that I have stuck my feet in the saltwater in order to keep cool.   We have had a fair amount of wind, but it hasn't been enough to keep me off the beaches.

Beside spring plants, construction towers often sprout in the Reston area in April  This year is no exception, and I was pleased to learn that the building of the Wiehle Ave. Metro Station has gotten started.  I am looking forward to being able to take the Metro on my Reston visits.  I might actually go into Washington more often if there is a reliable way around all the traffic.

Of course in early spring, visiting Reston or DC is way down on my list. I always want to make certain that the cold has been vanquished so I stay south usually until the summer heat appears.

First on the list in our coastal paradise is going fishing, and I have already managed a first fishing trip onto the White Oak River which is in my backyard.  Next on my list would be exploring the local beaches to see what the winter storms have wrought.  I have already done a couple surveys of the Point at Emerald Isle.  The fishing structure looks great near the shore.  Then I have to get the crop of tomatoes in the ground so I can start planning for that first tomato sandwich of the year the first week in June.  This year's tomatoes are in great shape already, and the first blooms opened on April 15.  I hope that doesn't mean the tax man gets a cut of my tomatoes.

After all the fishing, beach surveying, and tomatoes are on track, it is time to start taking care of our yard which is covered with an unusal grass called centipede.  It turns reddish brown in the winter and this year, the early greening of the yard was stopped by a late March frost.

Of course the frost only slowed it down. I took advantage of that to pull lots of wild onions.  Earlier this week I sprayed the yard for the weeds that I didn't catch with my pre-emergent weed killer.  On April 16, I will mow the yard for the first time this year. Centipede grass doesn't get fertizlized until June.  It actually doesn't grow very much in early spring which is fine with most of us here on the coast. Being used to the bluegrass yards in Southwest Virginia means that I am accustomed to mowing twice a week in the spring starting in late March.  Mowing once every two weeks like centipede yards require until late June is just fine with me.

While we are a few weeks ahead of Reston here on the coast, it won't take the Reston area long to catch up to our part of the Southern Outer Banks. Spring is a great time of year everywhere.   If the slow progress in North Virginia starts to depress you, just remember my friends in Canada sent me some pictures of their maple sugaring operation. The pictures were taken on April 10, and there was still over three feet of snow in the woods.

With luck, we will all survive the weekend of strong storms scheduled to start on April 16.  Here on the coast,  we can soon start thinking about summer while spring is hitting its stride in Northern Virginia.

A holiday shopping trip to the big city

Northern Virginia is a wonderful place to shop.  I doubt  there are many places where you can find so much shopping so conveniently located.  During my career at Apple Computer when I worked out of Reston, I would always try to bring my wife up for a holiday shopping trip.

Some of the trips stick in my mind.  One particularly nice visit around 2000 was when our corporate hotel was the Ritz-Carlton in Tyson's II.  We had a beautiful room, and we even got some snow and ice to strand us in the Ritz for 24 hours.  I think we managed a dinner at Maggiano's and breakfast at one of the food court shops.

Fortunately the weather cleared so my wife could visit Tyson's I which is her favorite mall.  There was a time when we would do a lot of holiday shopping, but now that our children are in their twenties and thirties, we only buy stocking presents.

With that in mind and some potential personal shopping for us, we made a visit to Reston just before Halloween this year.  It was actually a great time to hit the stores.  Our son took a day off from work and escorted us to Tyson's I.  As always we were amazed at the variety of stores, and at how many people wander the malls.

Our first stop as always was LL Bean's.   I made a quick trip to the men's department, found a pair of jeans, and then visited the sale racks where I found a couple of items.  My wife was still checking out the ladies clothes with our son when I took off to visit the Apple Store.  I wanted a copy of the newly released Microsoft Office for the Mac, and a firewire adapter cable.  After getting those items, I managed to have some hands on time with the new MacBook Air systems.

While I love Apple hardware, even I find it hard to justify their pricing.  I did finally buy my first new Mac in four years this fall.  It was an I5 iMac, and it is a great machine, but I do have a few bones to pick with Apple over the design.

After my wife finally decided that there were no clothes in LL Bean's that she needed, I got her to swing by the Apple Store for a quick look at the iPad.  It took her about one minute to decide that she would rather keep her laptop.  She did tell me that if we won the lottery, I could buy her a new MacBook Air.

Our next stop was the Vera Bradley Store.  I was pleased that they have a nice sofa for husbands.  It is great to have a place to relax while all the patterns are examined and debated.  The three ladies in our family are all multiple bag carrying Vera women.  When they all end up traveling together it looks like a Vera Bradley convention.

The staff at the Vera Bradley Store even gave bottles of water to my son and me to keep us hydrated during our shopping experience.  We managed to get out of the store without any purchases and wandered on through the mall.

I was surprised to see a Lego Store and a Steinway Store.  We had lunch at Coastal Flats.  I was amazed to find out that no cell phone worked there. According to my son, who is enough of a regular there to be welcomed by the staff,  I guess it has something to do with the movie theater being above the restaurant.  I am always suspicious in Northern Virginia when my cell phone doesn't work.  I end up looking for unlabeled buildings that might be jamming my signal

It was a great lunch, and a nice follow-up to our dinner the night before at their sister restaurant, Sweetwater Taver.  As we left the mall we visited a couple of children's stores to look for bargains for our granddaughter, and I made a stop at Levenger's just to look at all the neat things that I don't really need.

My wife made it through Tyson's I without buying anything.  I was not surprised. She is a frugal shopper, and she will only buy something when she has found a deal.

She convinced me to drive by our old apartment (now condominium) just north of Tyson's on Chain Bridge Road. I shared the apartment in McLean for a couple of years with my daughter and son just after they got out of college and started working.  Of course the road in the area has doubled or tripled in size.  It must be ten lanes wide at least.  As we passed our old home away from home, we noticed that the southbound lanes of Chain Bridge (Va. 123 or Dolly Madison) were completely stopped.  We had planned on turning around and heading south, but we ended up taking Lewinsville Road back to Spring Hill Road so we could get on the Toll Road without sitting in Friday afternoon, grid-locked traffic.

Of course you rarely avoid even stop and go traffic in Northern Virginia.  On the Toll Road back to Reston we had to exit at Hunter Mill Road to avoid stop and go rubber necking at an accident site.  I guess all the construction for the transit system will make holiday shopping lots of fun.

When we got back to the townhouse, I got to go shopping in my son's closet.  Both he and I have lost substantial weight so I was given a number of his outside jackets, a couple pair of jeans, and several short sleeved shirts.  He buys great stuff, and it is sort of neat to be able to recycle stuff within the family.  If we both keep losing weight, perhaps we can do it again next year.

That evening my wife treated the kids to a home cooked meal which we rustled up from ingredients purchased at the local Whole Foods.   While I wouldn't make Whole Foods my only grocery store, it is certainly a treat once in a while.  Where else could you find an ostrich egg when you need it?

Our entertainment to close the day was watching the Blueray version of Ironman 2 on my son's giant Sony TV.  Saturday morning, our last day in town, we visited for a while, I used my portable, traveling electric blower to clean the leaves off the deck, and then  we headed out for lunch at Chicken Out which used to be one of my evening favorites.

During our trip, we managed to hit most of our favorite spots, but we did not get to drive through Town Center or visit Trader Joe's.  I was diappointed that the Reston Ritz Camera shop has closed, but I am sure that something will spring up to take it's place.

The Northern Virginia area continues to be a neat spot to visit and to live if the traffic doesn't get to you.  We left Reston in early afternoon.  In spite of being in stop and go traffic just north of Fredericksburg for twenty minutes on a Saturday afternoon no less, we were at the stoplight just north of the Emerald Isle Bridge only six hours later. It was a reasonable drive considering all things.

While we are headed into a cold spell of weather down here on the coast, I am glad that I will be missing holiday traffic during construction and winter weather on the Toll Road.  The Southern Outer Banks feels like home these days, even when we get visited with some cold Canadian air.  Things are pretty quiet this time of year along the beach, and it is always a pleasure to get back to pick-up-truck-sized parking spaces instead of the tiny Northern Virginia ones.

I will use the current cold weather as time to work on my HouseVision project and my real estate websites.  We have had a busy fall in real estate, but after four years we are due some activity.  Still I will look forward to my next trip to Northern Virgina, the shopping mecca of the US.

Spring will be here soon in the South, and when Northern Virginia thaws out in April, it might be time for another visit.

 

How do you know if you are living in the right spot?

I can still remember moving from McLean to Reston.  We had been renting an apartment near Tyson's Corner.

McLean was a great location, but there was nothing affordable for sale.  We started looking, and it was clear that Reston was as close in as we could afford.

Reston had all the things needed.  It was convenient to work. That was especially the case for me since my work was at Apple over on Preston White Drive.

Reston also felt safe and there were trees, lots of services, and a number of reasonably priced places to eat.  Also when we got up in the morning, you felt a little protected from the world of traffic jams and beltway news.  The townhouse seemed to offer a little preserve of sanity in a world that moved pretty fast.

Reston turned out to be a good place to live.  No place is perfect, but given the alternatives in Northern Virginia, Reston is and was a good place to call home.

As a Realtor® I often talk to people who are deciding where to live.  We all have different things that make us happy.  Those things change over time.  After I graduated from college, I moved to Canada and ended up running a cattle operation for ten years.  It was not what I had planned to do, but inexpensive land, the desire to work out of doors, and the need to challenge the wilderness made Canada the right spot.

At the time I also loved cold weather and snow.  There were few things that I enjoyed more than a good snow storm.  We all change, and as I have aged, having six inches of freshly fallen snow for cross country skiing is not longer a high priority.  That was one of the reasons we moved back to the states.

Having access to federal contractors and high level government executives is also farther down the list today.  So living in Reston is also not my first choice.

What I do want is to walk outside in the morning and not have my system jolted by cold weather. I really miss living in Canada, but I do not miss the cold weather.

Walking out my door this morning and finding the temperature already at almost 65 degrees at 8 am is just about right.  While we have some great friend living in Edmonton, Alberta, you know it is cold there if your wake up temperature is more than triple theirs.

Seeing a White Heron in the distance from the dock behind my house is just icing on the cake.  In addition to being in the midst of natural beauty in a temperate climate, I enjoy the seven minutes of my commute to work.

Part of the commute is through farmland and the rest is down the two lanes of Highway 58 which crosses over the marshes of the White Oak River and and through some pieces of Croatan National Forest. Before I get down to the stoplight and make the turn onto the four lanes of Route 24, I pass a boat dealership, a golf cart dealer, and one of our favorite restaurants.

Our four lane road is nothing like a four lane road in Northern Virginia.  It is much less crowded, and in the space of a few hundred yards, I get to drive by our combined bank, liquor store, and police department.  The new, almost completed Walgreen's stands silently in front of our video store, Chinese Restaurant, Lowe's Grocery, and Lowe's Home Improvement.

Then just across the road from our office is our church.  Though we live a little ways out in the country, our world is a neat, nicely contained neighborhood that makes me feel comfortable.  I am pleased to be living here.  All the services that I can think of are nearby, and there are few places more beautiful.

The services, weather, and scenery are not the only reasons, but they are important ones.

My favorite reason for being here is if I miss the turn onto the four lane road, I end up over at Emerald Isle stuck enjoying the beaches. 

The fact that a mistake in my commute can put me on the beach is a pretty good indication that I am living in the right spot for me.

Not exactly Reston weather

This is a picture of the church we used to attend when we lived in Canada.

I recently did a post, Feel the crunch  of the snow, where I talked about how different Canadian snow is from snow in southwest Virginia.

That post reminded me of a few people in the Reston area who are always rooting for snow storms.

There's nothing wrong with liking snow.  I used to enjoy cross country skiing and snowshoeing. 

There are few things nicer than cross country skiing on a few inches of pristine fresh snow on top of a groomed snow road.

The problem with snow in Reston and any city for that matter is that the snow not only doesn't come down pristine, it also gets nasty pretty quickly.

Much of that has to do with the temperature.  This morning Cape Carteret where we have a second home was below freezing for a few hours.  We made it above freezing by 8:30 am.  We are close to 50F just before noon.  Even Reston is at 37F.

Cape Carteret probably had six or seven hours of below freezing temperatures last night which is a lot for us. Fredicton, which is not as cold as Tay Creek where we lived, will not even make it half way from zero to freezing today.

That likely means that even snow in the sunshine will not melt. If you are in the far north with few cars and little heavy industry, that kind of snow can stay very pretty for extended periods of time.

That is especially the case when you often have two to six inches of flurries three or four days a week.  They did not even bother plowing our roads unless we got over six inches of snow.

The winter snow was not slick, in fact traction was great.  You could also slide into a snow bank with almost no damage to your car.

Most people kept blankets or a sleeping bag in their pickups (farm country)  along with a chain.  If you saw someone stuck along the road, you would always stop to haul them out.

I am sorry that my snow loving Reston friends haven't had a significant snow this year.  You certainly are one of the few places that haven't gotten a big storm.  I am sure there are some places that would ship you some snow.

Just don't send it through the ports down here on the NC Crystal Coast.  I do not want to risk anything derailing those 70 degree temperatures scheduled for early next week.

What makes a place feel like home?

A view like this from our back deck can make you feel like you are home.  But often it takes more than a view to make a place really seem like home.

During most of my corporate career I traveled a lot.  We lived in Roanoke, Va for over eighteen years. 

Much of that time I was driving up Interstate 81 and spending time in Reston at Apple's office beside the Dulles Toll Road.

Eventually I got to the point that I could no longer take staying in a hotel.  It did not matter how fancy the hotel happened to be.  I just wanted something that did not change and felt like home.

I was lucky in that my oldest daughter graduated about that time, and we rented a two bedroom apartment in McLean.  The first summer my son came up and slept on the living room floor so he could do an intern job.

It wasn't too long before my daughter bought a three bedroom townhouse in Reston.  That became my second home. The smallest bedroom became mine temporarily.  I could leave clothes and toiletries three.  I didn't have to make reservations, and I got to spend time with my Northern Va. family.

While having a bed and my own space was a huge step towards home, having familiar surroundings outside the home also plays a big part in making an area feel like home.

In today's world more often than not the stores are same, only the people change.  Still there are differences.  I used to enjoy an occasional visit to Reston Kabob.  There were many nights when we would meet for dinner at Marie's at South Lakes Plaza. Marie's which has been gone a while was a family kind of place.  They knew me since I would grab lunch there also at least once a week.

Beyond the restaurants there were the grocery stores since I always cooked my own breakfast and tried to a cook a meal or two when I was visiting.  I used to frequent the Giant on North Shore.  It was small and sometimes even ran out of chicken breast or hamburger, but I could get in and out of there in a couple of minutes.

Of course having a Books a Million and a Barnes Noble was like having a dream come true to a reading addict.

Still my favorite spot was Whole Foods.  While I enjoyed Trader Joe's, I often marveled at the plants and exotic foods that made it to the shelves of Whole Foods.  Some of the things I enjoyed from Whole Foods became such a part of my routine that I would load a cooler up with ice and take them home to Roanoke.

The other night we were headed from Roanoke to Cape Carteret to find some warmth, and I was on a mission.  I wanted to find the Whole Foods in Cary, NC.  It did not take a lot of effort.  It was  just a  short distance from where 64E run into US1 N.

When we turned into the parking lot late that evening part of me felt like I was home in Reston.

It was a good feeling finding some familiar things that had long been absent from my routine.  I was saddened to find that Icelandic Salmon no longer makes it to Whole Food's cases, but there was no shortage of good things that could be replacements. 

It was a great experience aside from having to drag my wife out of the orchids at the front of the store.  She was overwhelmed.

As much as well known stores and a house with your things can help make a place field like home, routine and rhythm also play a part.

Every place has a different rhythm.  Synchronizing yourself with it makes you feel part of the place.

In Reston, traffic is one of the key rhythms. You learn to structure your life around the traffic jams.  Timing what you do according to traffic flow becomes second nature.  You go to lunch when you know you can find a parking place.

In Roanoke ice and storms in the winter immediately restructure people's lives.  If you live on a steep hill, you know when the sun will melt the ice and likely what time in the afternoon that it will refreeze.  You make plans around those times.  Some roads you just avoid when ice is prevalent.

In Cape Carteret, we are even closer to the elements. Weather is a big topic just like it used to be when we lived on a farm in Canada.  When the weather is good or there is beautiful sunset on tap, you will find people making time to enjoy it.

Beyond that the shifting regularity of the times for high and low tides often adds structure to our lives. We are in place with lots of water spread very thinly so it makes sense for people to know when low tide will arrive.

Finally it takes people to make you feel at home.  In Reston I had family and an office family.  Most weekends I was home so my church family and other friends remained in Roanoke.

Now that we are in Cape Carteret, I have an office family, a church family, and a neighborhood which is southern enough that I actually know several of the my neighbors.  We have also started making some other friends.  It's pretty easy to do here on the coast.

The stores here are pretty different from Reston and Roanoke.   We do have an Ace and a Lowe's Home Improvement, but there is no Giant and no Kroger (the Roanoke grocery store of choice).  And the closest Whole Foods is about 2.5 hours away.

Yet I do believe that the most important thing in making a home is your mindset.  If you want to find the good in place you will find it.

My Giant on North Shore and Marie's are gone.  Reston will never feel like the same home again.  I have changed also, and my office family is long gone.

Even in Roanoke, my neighborhood Ace Hardware disappeared. We recently visited our favorite inexpensive restaurant, the Pancake House, and they were closed temporarily due to the lack of help.  Roanoke might never be the same home again either. It has changed along with me.

So we cannot depend on stores to make a home for us, we have to put our trust in our own minds to build our homes with the pieces that we find and our own changed realities.

Sometimes we move and have to regroup the pieces, but it can be a very positive experience.  Change is constant, and you can always go home if you carry part of it with you in your head and look for the good in your new surroundings.

Maybe that mindset is why I have managed to be happy for so long.

The dream of getting away from it all

It is likely that this scene of a small cottage on the shores of Gallant's Channel near Beaufort, NC might be an appealing scene to someone about to be overwhelmed by the pressures of life in Reston.

I can still remember vividly driving up Wiehle Avenue after a tough day and wishing that I could get as far away as possible.

The dream that a remote location can fix your problems is a recurrent one.

Unfortunately even when you find that paradise by the water, it sometime takes two or three days and in some cases a week or two before people can actually jettison the problems which they have dragged along with them.

Not surprisingly those of us who live amongst all this beauty get overwhelmed also with day to day life.

As much as I would like to think that the beauty scenery sucks all the tough stuff out of a day, it just doesn't happen if you are working in this modern world.

The one thing that is a little easier in my surroundings is to find a spot where you can at least temporarily have your problem melt.

For me that is usually either walking the beach or even better getting in my kayak for a solo trip out on the river to fish a little and watch the sun go down.  It is about the most peaceful spot on earth during the week.  It is rare that I see a boat. 

You might see one or two on the weekends but as someone said we have a lot of water spread might thin.  That seems to keep the "crowds" down in the Intracoastal Waterway.

That's fine with me.

A different color sky

When I first started coming to Reston in the late eighties, I was driving up Interstate 81 from Roanoke.

For a while the speed limit was 55 mph. 

I would get to Reston and always found it a little less crowded and perhaps even not as obviously impacted by traffic as our previous home in Columbia, MD.

Of course home in Roanoke was on top of a mostly undeveloped mountain.

A couple of things happened.  Most of the Maryland traffic moved down to Reston.  The result was that the Toll Road got pretty crowded and the skies got a little less blue.  There are some interesting sunsets in the Reston area but none to match the spectacular natural beauty of the ones on the Carolina coast where we now live.

Not only did Reston suffer from the increased traffic, but Interstate 81 became a nightmare of truck traffic.

Though most people in Roanoke have a hard time admitting it, the geography of the Roanoke Valley which makes it so beautiful also makes it a trap for pollution from the thousands of vehicles a day that stream down Interstate 81.

You sort of expect a gray haze when you get to Reston and the DC area these days.  It is a little more surprising that views from the mountains around Roanoke aren't nearly as good as they once were.

In case you're wondering, the picture in the post is taken from my driveway looking towards the steps to our upper deck. We are in western Carteret County near the sandy beaches of Emerald Isle.  We often are treated to blue sky and sometimes we get the fluffy white clouds.

Some it creates a grand entrance to our neighborhood like the photo in this post.

Other times it combines with water to produce a spectacular landscape.

If these pictures get you in the mood for more, I have a bunch of photos at this link.  There are also slides shows of boating on the Carolina coast.  That's is as close to heaven as I think you can get.

Some for a visit and see for yourself.  Here's my Emerald Isle Travel Guide.

Land of many grocery stores

When I worked in Reston one of my favorite grocery stores was Whole Foods at 11660 Plaza America Dr. in Reston.

I even wrote a post, "Food for the empire," about some Salmon I got there in 2005.  We went on to develop a taste for the Icelandic Salmon that Whole Foods would often have.

Being from one of the Provinces, Southwest Virginia, I was always amazed at the variety of grocery stores.  I think I tried them all over the years from the Gourmet Giant in McLean to Trader Joe's.

I even worked up in the Reston area long enough to enjoy a trip or two to Wegman's.

People have their favorite grocery stores and different reasons as to why they are favorites.  My son does not like the small Giant on North Shore because they don't have an automated checkout.  He often goes to the Harris-Teeter over on Reston Parkway just for that reason.

My wife really likes the small Kroger in our neighborhood in Roanoke, Va.  I like the Lowe's Foods in Cape Carteret, NC where we have a second home.

The picture at the beginning of the post is from the new Ukrop's that has just opened in Roanoke. 

For years I hauled specialty foods back to Roanoke in cooler.

Roanoke was the wasteland of grocery stores.  Harris Teeter abandoned us and even Winn Dixie left. 

The battle in Roanoke was between Kroger and Food Lion.  I could not figure out how Reston could have every grocery store under the sun, and the only variety we had in Roanoke was visiting a Kroger with a different address.

I should say that Roanoke always has had three good alternatives but they have remained small and in one case somewhat seasonal.

Tinnell's which I wrote about in Rotisserie Chicken My Way is a great small grocery store with some high quality meats. 

The Roanoke Natural Foods Coop and The Roanoke Farmer's Market are the two others which I have mentioned in numerous posts including A great fall harvest at the farmers market and more recently Changes at the Roanoke Farmers' Market.

Things started to change in Roanoke in the fall of 2005.  Fresh Market showed up in town.  They were overwhelmed for weeks.  I think they have started a small trend. 

Ukrop's opened this summer, and there are rumors of another gourmet grocery store coming to town.  I am not holding my breath for Trader Joe's but I wouldn't be surprised as it came high in a survey of what Roanoke people want.

I still love Whole Foods and am hoping to stop by one of the Raleigh ones on the way back to the beach.

We went shopping at Ukrop's yesterday, but we did not buy anything.  Later in the evening we went to the Roanoke Natural Food Coop for some Marmite which I wrote about in my post, The perfect Saturday morning breakfast, and why we do it.

I am amazed at the tremendous variety of prepared foods that are now available at some very expensive prices.  I saw pimento cheese for sale at Ukrop's for over $9 per pound.  It did not look nearly as good as the pimento cheese recipe that I have shared on the web.

My predictions are that it won't be long before no one knows how to really cook which is a shame since most of the grocery store prepared food won't hold a candle to the great food prepared at home.

Great ingredients make great foods.   The grocery stores have the ingredients sometime even tomatoes like the ones we find in North Carolina.  Paying them to make food that isn't as good as you can make on your own doesn't make sense to me.

I have yet to ever have a pot roast as good as the ones done by my wife Glenda.  Her clam chowder would put any imitation from a grocery store to shame.  Then there is the wonderful fried chicken that my mother was famous for cooking. It required a first and second step but the results were worth it.  No grocery store chicken will ever compete with that.

Then there are foods like lightly fried flounder that would be terrible warmed up.

With all this food talk, I have gotten hungry.  It is time to find some lunch.

Not always smooth sailing

Anyone who travels the Toll Road, can relate to the phrase "not always smooth sailing."

It has been at least six months since I have been on the Toll Road at all and over three years since I used it regularly.  By now perhaps the Toll Road is almost never snag free.

Driving the Toll Road on a regular basis adds some stress to you life. There are plenty of other things that can do the same thing.

Yesterday someone was bitten by a shark near Atlantic Beach, NC.  I haven't read the local paper yet, but I think this was the first attack in over thirteen years.

The water picture above was not taken yesterday, but it was taken late in the evening the day before at the western Emerald Isle beach access which is probably about twelve miles from where the lady was bitten.

The experts are blaming the attack on the water that murky because of the waves.  I would say that is a pretty good guess based on the picture.

You can check the pictures in this post, The reason it is called the Crystal Coast, to see how clear the water normally is.

The shark event will add some stress to going to the beach.  It is interesting to wach how some people handle stress.

We have recently taken up boating.  My wife and I are in our late fifties.  I started preparing for this event by taking a boating course seven months before we bought the boat.  I also hired someone to teach me the basics and spent part of the winter reading boating books and studying charts.

Still there was plenty of stress when my wife and I first launched our 20 ft skiff by ourselves and headed down the river to the Intracoastal Waterway.  As we have become more familiar with the buoys and the boat, we have gotten to the point of where we can enjoy the boating a little more.

Still it is a lot of work.   However, based on my observations, I would have faced  lots more stress if  I had just hopped in the boat and assumed that I could figure out everything by trial and error.

Some people cannot handle stress outside of their comfort zone and are not willing to do the work to expand their comfort zone. 

When faced with stress which mostly could have been handled by better preparation, they shut down and leave the work for others. I guess it is a true American trait these days to hand as much as possible of the stress and challenge over to someone else.

When we were farming in the Canadian wilderness, that was not an option.  If something broke down, you had to fix it.  If a dangerous situation occurred, you had to figure out how to get out of it or suffer the consequences.

We survived mechanical failures in temperatures as low as minus 40 Fahrenheit.  In a case where there is no one else to turn to, you often call on inner reserves that you don't even know that you have.

While knowing those reserves are there isn't going to remove all the stress from your life, it is going to make handling it a lot easier.

In the end, calling on those inner reserves is a lot better than the typical modern day American response of throwing up your hands and letting someone else solve the problem.