When you spend most of your time on the North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks, you have to either embrace the heat and humidity or stay locked up inside.
While you have some climate advantages living at the beach, cool mornings are not something you get to enjoy very often from the middle of June until the first of October along the beaches.
I love living at the coast and don't even mind that there is little dry clothing on me after an early morning mowing of the yard at home on the White Oak River near Cape Carteret, NC. I look forward to those cooler October days when the waters of the ocean and rivers are still warm.
However, I find that one of the great pleasures of modern life is sleeping with the windows open and hearing no heat pumps laboring to cool the humid air.
Our other home on the foothills of Twelve O'Clock Knob overlooking downtown Roanoke can also get very warm in the summer. Still when September rolls around, you can usually count on some cool evenings to remind you that you are in the mountains.
We have not only slept with the windows open the last few days, we have opened the doors to our screened porch which opens off the master bedroom. When you do that, sleeping in our bedroom becomes a little like sleeping in a tree house. You can hear the sounds of the night, and you have to sleep with layers of cover since by morning, you can count on the room temperature matching that of the out of doors.
This morning I woke up just before 6 AM for a brief bathroom visit, and when I came back to bed, it was so cool in our bedroom that I closed the door to the screened porch. Then I snuggled down under the light weight down comforter on our bed.
As I was drifting back off to sleep, I tried to remember the last time I had awakened at the beach with any covers on me. It might have been in early August when some of our children and our granddaughter were visiting. The kids don't think much of our having the thermostats set to 78 degrees or higher so I think they cranked the one upstairs down to 68 degrees for a day or so.
It won't be long before we are savoring the last warmth of summer that has been stored in the waters along our shores, but for right now that cool mountain air feels like some welcome relief for what has been a very warm summer season.
I know the cool weather is on the way. I keep a close eye on temperatures around the country and in Canada. I consider Edmonton, Alberta, the canary in the mine when it comes to cool weather.
This morning they woke up to 34.6 degrees Fahrenheit. So while I am enjoying some relief from summer's heat, I will remain mindful that it won't be long before we will miss summer's warmth.
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