Once a Reston resident

Something On Which NVA Residents Agree

From my six hour distance North Virginia sometimes appears to be a contentious spot.  I worked there long enough to know that agreement on most things near the beltway is about as scare as a good parking spot near Reston Town Center on a nice Sunday afternoon.

While Northern Virginia certainly does not have a monopoly on strongly held opinions,  all you have to do is look at the diverse organizations located in the area and wonder how people  stay civil with each other at all. With a culture based on government contractors and lobbyists, someone is always trying slide something over on the next person.

However, there is one thing thing that most folks can agree on and that is early July is good time to leave town.  While Congress might be in session, there is a good chance that even less work than usual might get done.  Washington and surrounding areas can be pretty miserable in the heat especially when you are supposed to show up to work in a suit and tie.

Back in my days at Apple my employees were well aware of how much I disliked an account call in July that required a suit and tie.  I am not sure I have forgiven one of my former employees yet over the hike through the Pentagon tunnel on one hot July day when the temperatures approached 100F.

So it is with good reason that residents tend to abandon Northern Virginia during the heat of July and August. The one good thing to come of this is that commuting traffic traffic decreases noticeably until after Labor Day.

Some Northern Virginia residents head across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to the Delaware Beaches and others head down Interstate 95 then over to Chesapeake and down to North Carolina's Outer Banks.  This late June traffic map shows some of the challenges in escaping Northern Virginia during the summer.  Some of the nation's worst traffic gets even more horrible as increasing numbers of people flee the city.

As native North Carolinians my wife and I grew up going to the state's beaches and have watched them change over time.  There are few of the state beaches that we have not sampled.  When I got ready to jettison corporate life and Apple decided that they had no further use for me (see my book, The Pomme Company), we investigated places to live from Assateague Island all the way south to Bald Head Island. We even went back to one of my favorite stomping grounds during my youth, Ocracoke Island.

As we were doing this survey of beaches, we took an anniversary trip to Beaufort, North Carolina.  I fell in love once again with Carteret County and its Crystal Coast.  After all the wandering I did in my earlier years including building and running a cattle farm in Maritime Canada, I had to wonder what would have happened if I had just kept my toes in the saltwater by the Point on Emerald Isle when I first visited it during the summer of 1969.  There were a number of reasons why we ended up in Carteret County, but we have stayed here because it is a wonderful place to enjoy the water and be close to the natural world.

Most Northern Virginians never make it to the area most of us call the Southern Outer Banks.  If there is little traffic you can make it from Reston to the Emerald Isle area in about six hours.  In the same no traffic scenario you could also make it Duck on the Northern Outer Banks in about five hours.  We all know there is little chance of there being no traffic.

However, once you get past Richmond, Virginia, the trip to the Crystal Coast is usually relatively traffic free. It has been a few years since I battled the traffic from Chesapeake to the Northern Outer Banks, but I can well remember spending an amazing amount of time tied up in traffic.  I also remember the challenge of making a left turn in Duck during the peak season.

While there are no guarantees, usually you can make it the Crystal Coast in about seven hours given about an hour of slow downs in the Fredericksburg area.  Once you get here, you will find a totally different experience.  This area is a family beach area and you will find lots more trees and a whole lot fewer people. In fact the mainland just before the beaches is the home to the 158,000 acre Croatan National Forest.  The mainland is closer than it is on Northern Banks and is also the permanent home of many escapees of the urban world.  We also 56 miles of the Cape Lookout National Seashore and some of the best beaches in the state in those accessible only by ferry or boat to Bear Island.

If you love to boat, there is no better place than the big coastal rivers of the area, Bogue Sound, and the easily accessible Atlantic.  If you like seafood, we still have real fishermen and places to buy fish fresh off the boat.  There are no giant restaurants but there are no giant crowds either.

I have seen all the beaches, there are none better than what you will find in Carteret County.  If you are interested in more information, try my free online travel guide to Emerald Isle or read more about the Crystal Coast at my Crystal Coast Life blog.  Our 180 plus page travel guide to the area is only $3.99 in our five star rated Kindle version or a little over $20 in the full color paperback version.

If you do escape to our beaches, you might find one like the Point that can touch you in ways that most beaches never can.

 

Escape from the City

A rare uncrowded beltway picture

If you live in the Washington area, one of the things that binds people together is the desire to escape the area.

There are times the mass of humanity makes you want to leave during the holidays.

If you have ever done it, you know there are plenty challenges to making that happen.

 

An article in the December 20, 2013, Washington Post brought back lots of memories. The article, I-95: The bane of our holiday travel existence has some choice words for I95.

We meet again, as 2.1 million residents of the Washington area attempt to leave the city by car this Christmas week, desperately crawling along the demonic hellscape of your infernal asphalt wasteland. Monica Hess, Washington Post

Anyone who has lived or worked in the Washington area or who has friends there can attest to how bad the traffic is. The holidays only make it worse.

Years ago in the late eighties when I started traveling back and forth to Northern Virginia from Roanoke, Virginia, Interstate 81 was an escape from the traffic.

Once you made it over the mountains on I66 and descended into the Shenandoah Valley, you could count on a reasonable and even pleasant trip. That respite from traffic disappeared many years ago. As far back as 2006, I can remember having to exit I81 more than once to get around traffic jams.

I will not pretend to know which is worse during the holidays, but I do know I81 has slowed to a crawl around Thanksgiving for well over 25 years. Of course I95 near Fredericksburg is pretty bad just about all the time. We have been in some epic traffic jams there. Last spring we actually got off I95 near Fredericksburg, headed west, and eventually came in I66 because we heard that backups on the beltway were actually causing the problems south of Washington.

Still I enjoy visiting the Northern Virginia area. There is no doubt that Tyson's Corner along with neighboring Reston can be called the epicenter of shopping.

At one time I had fun knowing exactly where to park at Tyson's Corner. The right spot meant that I could sneak in and out of LL Bean's and the Apple Store with a minimal amount of fuss. Still that required being in town early during the Christmas season and leaving well before December 20. I probably would not even attempt that now.

I long ago decided to escape the holiday madness. I am much more interested in enjoying the seasonal reversal and our winter marsh visitors here on the Carolina coast during the holidays than I am in shopping in any mall.

Over the years we have seen more and more people come to the beach for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. Many of us who live here and the visitors come to join us find seasonal peace here along the quiet waters of our piece of paradise, the Southern Outer Banks. The area's south facing beaches, including those in the town of Emerald Isle, stretch from near Cape Lookout down to the Swansboro area.  They are nice any time of year, but they are particularly nice on a warm December day or January weekend.

Our home not far up the river from Swansboro, North Carolina makes a nice harbor away from all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. Christmas is pretty peaceful on the White Oak and we would not have it any other way.

If you are thinking of coming for a visit check out our area travel guide. With all its pictures it is the perfect complement for that new tablet and only costs $3.99 for the Kindle version which works on just about anything.

A World Defined by Construction

We traveled to Reston recently to conduct some business.  The changes in the area's infrastructure since our last trip in October of 2012 were pretty spectacular.

In October it seemed as if all of Northern Virginia was turned upside down.  This April the pieces seemed to be falling into place.  The Wiehle Silver Line Station looks the part and the new lanes on the beltway are just as confusing to a visitor as I thought they would be.

During those many years I worked in Reston I was convinced that residents operated on the theory that if you did not know exactly what lane you should be in at all times, that you had no business cluttering up the roads.

I was traveling from Southwest Virginia at the time on a regular enough basis that I could keep myself from being run over.  Now that our visits are more like every six months than every week, things are a little more challenging. 

The Toll Authority decided that I was not using my EasyPass enough so we had to send it back and they kept the money that was in the account.  Having to travel with quantities of quarters does not help the situation.

Still I am impressed with how the landscape has changed.  When I first visited the Dulles area in 1987, Route 28 was a congested two lane road.  I often wonder where it will all end.  After all the traffic jams do not seem to be disappearing only moving farther out.

We now live on the North Carolina coast, an area with almost no traffic. We are more used to land being shaped by wind and waves than man.  Here on our coast, buildings are constructed with the hope that they will survive the next storm not the pouding of millions of subway riders. 

We are actually lucky along the Crystal Coast, much of our construction is newer than what hurricane Sandy swept away in New Jersey.  When our house was built, it was constructed to the most current flood maps. We are a few miles back from the beach and are protected by Bogue Banks and its seriously strong vegetation.

Still mother nature manages to push around a lot of sand   Man's efforts at restoring sand that storms move is little more than a shell game.  In spite of that, we love the beach and do not want it to disappear so I applaud efforts to keep the inlets open and the beaches from disappearing. A lot of people benefit here from the beaches.  Also we are better protected because of dunes that are here. I am pleased that area officials value our sand and dunes so much.

I am particularly fond of the area in the town of Emerald Isle called the Point.  It is a very dynamic piece of sand.  In November of 2007 as this picture shows it was covered with water.  Today if you stand in the ocean where the sand ends and look back at where the 2007 photo was taken you will find over 1,400 feet of sand as you can see from this photo taken in April of 2013.

That is a lot of sand that mother nature has moved.  It certainly makes you appreciate the power of wind and waves and puts a little damper on any thoughts that we might have this world under control.

If you would like to read more about my most recent adventure on the Point, try this post, The End of the Sand. If all your beach memories have high rise condos in them, the Emerald Isle area is well worth visiting because that is not what beaches are really like.  Everyone needs to appreciate a strand of sand where there is almost nothing and we have places like that in Carteret County.

Emerald Isle is a place that you can have a beach vacation reminiscent of ones that we North Carolinians enjoyed so much in the fifties and sixties. Our area is not a Myrtle Beach and does not want to be Duck. We are pretty happy with our image of a family beach where everyone is welcome to enjoy the beach.

We have just published A Week at the Beach -The 2013 Travel Guide to Emerald Isle. On May 1 & 2 it is a free download.  It is a Kindle book but there is free software available to let you read it on almost anything.  Check out this webpage for details.

If you love beautiful uncrowded beaches, you will enjoy the book, its many pictures and maps and even recipes.  It is a beach lover's guide to loving a very special beach area.