Once a Reston resident

Reston gets beaten on a traffic innovation

With so many of my adult years intertwined with Reston's growth, it seems a little unusual to suggest that Cornelius, North Carolina, might have sneaked one by the traffic experts in Fairfax County, Virginia.

I made my first trip down HIghway 28 in 1987 and like many I can hardly believe how things have changed in the traffic landscape between the beltway and Dulles. Getting to the Reston Apple office for many years required traversing the Wiehle Avenue bridge over the Dulles Toll Road.  I can remember when the bridge got massively bigger and now there is even a Metro stop there.

Fortunately I have not had to travel the Wiehle Avenue bridge for work during the Silver Line construction.  Mostly I have seen it on occasional trips to Northern Virginia.  So I will admit to not knowing how well the bridge is handling what I am sure is ever increasing traffic.  We all know that in spite of Metro lines and ever increasing lanes, traffic never goes down.

I have actually been visiting the Cornelius-Huntersville area of North Carolina more often than Reston. It is another high growth area which might surprise many Northern Virginians who think the world ends about twenty miles out Interstate 66. I used to wonder if anyone from Northern Virginia had even heard of Southwest Virginia much less visited the area where we had a home for many years. In what might be an even more surprising turn of events, there are some spots in North Carolina that are capable of giving Northern Virginia a run for its money when it comes to traffic and growth.  One of the huge draws for the area is Lake Norman which has 520 miles of shoreline.

It turns out that Charlotte was the second fastest growing large city in the nation during 2013. Of course Fairfax County is no slouch and over the last few years, and it has gotten more people from Mecklenburg County, the home of Charlotte, that Mecklenburg County has gotten from Fairfax.  Of course I figure that is because Northern Virginians think they will fall off the edge of the earth that far south.

Like Fairfax County and all of Northern Virginia, much of the explosive growth in the Charlotte region is happening farther from the city center. Iredell County just up I77 from Charlotte is seeing explosive growth and as a result will get some express lanes. Express lanes are nothing new to Reston residents, but the bridge over I77 at Exit 28 in Cornelius just on the edge of Mecklenburg  County is unlike anything that I have seen in Reston.  As you can see from the picture I took, it is not a normal traffic flow.  I will be curious to hear if there is anything like it in Northern Virginia.

Local residents were told that this bridge was a state of the art design. I got to see it during the construction phase which definitely created some huge traffic tie ups.  The picture is looking east from the west side of the Catawba Avenue Bridge over I77.  We are on the right side of the road poised to head over to left side of the road as we begin to cross the bridge.  When we get near the end of the bridge, if you want go north on I77, you do not have to turn left across traffic because you are now on the left side of the bridge.  In spite of that when you get a little farther along, you have migrated back to the right and can easily turn right on Highway 21 South or head straight into Cornelius towards one of my favorite barbeque places. All of this lane changing takes more than a few stoplights which can prove to be a challenge.

While it might be too early to declare this either a phenomenal success or an unbelievable waste of money, traffic is moving on the bridge which is more than I can say about the construction period.  The one way to tell if it is successful is to see if a bridge or two get converted in Northern Virginia.

If you are interested in the Cornelius-Huntersville area, you might want to check out Birkdale Village.  The area reminds me of Reston Town Center except it has a mall filled with a Christmas tree instead of a skating rink. There is also a forest of Christmas trees for sale among all the trendy shops, restaurants and apartments and condos over them.

It is definitely a bustling area.  I visited my first Publix grocery store not far from Birkdale Town Center. It is not a Wegman's but it is a very nice store and there is a Whole Foods Store on the way to it.  Our dream is a little different than the urban world of either Charlotte or Reston.  However, not many folks get to live on the water by the beach so it is a good dream.

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.

Back To Work

For many people, Labor Day marks the end of summer and a time to fully focus on work. 

When we lived on our farm in Canada, that first week of September was when we started cleaning up the garden for the first frost. 

We would pull the onions and eventually spread them out on a farm wagon to dry.  It was just one of the many chores that our Labs, Tok and Fundy helped us to do before the snow came.

I have written before about the increase in traffic in the Reston area that first week in September.  I am guessing that has not changed in the many years since I stopped working in Northern Virginia. People in Reston seem to find renewed intensity in job focus after Labor Day. I am not sure if the intensity comes from having had a nice vacation or the knowledge that there are only a couple of months until the holiday season when things slow everywhere but the malls.

My memories of working in Reston are long days for the whole year.  That is just standard in the world of technology as many Restonians will tell you.  Home for me was almost four hours away so other than having a nice meal in the evening, I spent much of my time working and often trying to convince those with families nearby that should go home before 9 PM.  Such was the dedication of employees at Apple in the early days.  Since I managed a team of people across the country, it was not unusual to talk to someone on the west coast at eight or nine PM east coast time. It was often easier to talk then than it was earlier in the day when I was swamped with east coast calls.

Now that I live on North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks, my hours are a bit more flexible and a lot shorter.  I try to be at my desk except for a lunch break from 10 AM until 4 or 5 PM.  It is when I do my calls and the research for them.  Then I often return to work late in the evenings for another two or three hours when I spend time writing.

What makes my schedule very palatable is where I live.  I can take a boat ride early in the morning or go on a beach walk late in the afternoon.  Both my skiff and kayak are just behind our home a few feet from the water.  Living in an area where the water is at your doorstep makes some quick recreation possible when you have some flexibility in your work hours. 

I often wonder why so many companies pack themselves so tightly into Northern Virginia.  There are some good reasons why it is not so productive. Often administrative people end up having a horrendous commute to areas where they can actually afford to live.  On the weekends even shopping is dififcult because of the traffic which also limits recreational opportunities.

You can buy a single family home in our area with three bedrooms and two baths for under $200K.  Other than a handful of weekends when bridge traffic to the beaches is slow, we rarely even think about traffic unless it is avoiding tourist traffic in the grocery stores on the weekend.

Many of today's companies still like to gather their people in offices because most do not trust people to work unsupervised.  Maybe my career which has mostly been in home offices colors my view, but I know that I can work very effectively without any supervision.  I suspect people living in an area like where we live can be far more effective employees because they are not exhausted from commuting and they have plenty of nearby recreational opportunities to keep their minds fresh.  Of course companies would be worried that they would be taking calls on the beach.  There are far worse things for employees to do.  Even I will admit to have gotten a few calls while in my boat, but the clients did not seem to mind.

WideOpen Networks the company where I work is based in Blacksburg, Virginia about thirty-five minutes farther than the almost six hour journey from my house on the coast to Roanoke, Virginia where I worked for Apple.  Modern technology lets me do my job from the upstairs office in our home.

The Internet changed a lot of things and having high speed broadband has made an even bigger difference.  During most of the time when I am in the office, I keep Skype running on one of my three office computers.  The CEO of our company and I can easily have a video conference to discuss things.  We use some Internet based tools that allow us to share contacts, plans, and to do lists.  We often upload files that we are sharing to DropBox.  When we want to have a joint call with a client, we always use GoToMeeting software.

While I am still talking to many of the same level of people that I was meeting when I worked for Apple, mostly my meetings now are by telephone or video conference.  It certainly makes a huge difference in travel expenses and yet we still get business done.  Sometimes personal face to face trips are required but usually those are the speciality of others on the team.  I get to stay at my desk and take a lunch walk along the docks in our subdivision.  Just the view there like this picture of an August monring can keep your spirits up.

This is such a radically different way of working that it is hard to compare with those first years when I worked in an office in Fredericton, New Brunswick from 1982-84.  Messages often came on little pinks slips from the secretaries and calls on clients were almost always in person.  The idea of working months without filing an expense report would be hard to explain to us in those days when we lived in our cars.

I look at working like I do as similar to a school which runs twelve months of the year instead of just nine months.  With my current job presenting the opportunity for recreation in the mornings and afternoons, there is hardly a need for a vacation of a couple of weeks.  Once in a while I might take an afternoon or morning off to go fishing but even that is unusual since I can often go fishing in the morning and be back at my desk at a normal time or I can fish on the weekends like I did when I caught my prized Red Drum.

Of course as the season changes and we have less day light and it is a little harder to enjoy those late afternoon trips, but those shortened days really do not come into play until just before Thanksgiving and by then things are slowing down for the holidays.

I fully expect that people will continue to work very hard in this century.  I suspect the thing which might make their jobs more tolerable is where they work.  Areas like Carteret County along North Carolina's Crystal Coast are in a perfect position to take advantage of the changing situation if they quickly can grasp the importance of building the right kind of infrastructure.  In a world where the personal sales call is rapidly disappearing, high speed fiber to our homes is going to become the superhighway of the future. Cable modems are a poor and expensive substitute for a true high speed connection.

This is a great article about the importance of broadband to communities.  I hope our leaders figure this out.  The model of everyone working in a densely packed area does not seem sustainable.

For me being in this truly scenic area and working in a high tech job is truly living my dream.

Ruffled Waters With A Sea Breeze

A Sea Breeze Coming In from The White Ok River

I keep up with the Reston weather because our family has some members still in the area.  I often stayed at their Reston home during my years calling on accounts in and around the beltway.

I think my last account calls in the area were in late 2005 so it has been a number of years since I cooked in a suit in an epic Northern Virginia heat wave, but I still remember a number of hot weather seiges that match this recent one of six straight days above ninety degrees Fahrenheit.  It is hard to erase the memory of a hike to the Pentagon through the tunnel in a suit on a steamy Washington day when the temperature made it into the upper nineties.

Certainly most people realize that living in a major metro area is different than living in a rural area near the coast.  While there are many conveniences in and around Northern Virginia, we have a few things which create a more pleasant climate for humans especially when they are relaxing outside. A story focusing on the differences between the two areas will bring to light a few interesting tidbits.

Our home is near the part of North Carolina's Outer Banks that actually curves south from Ocracoke Island to Cape Lookout and then swings west from Cape Lookout.  It means our beaches face the south.  There are barrier islands along Carolina's coast almost all the way to South Carolina. We are just one part of them.  Our particular area is about 55 miles northeast of Wilmington and almost 195 miles due south of Richmond.  This map will help you visualize the area.  You can actually drive to our area from the Reston area in six to seven hours.

The area where we live is often called the Crystal Coast or the Southern Outer Banks.  Both tags are marketing tags that mask the name of Carteret County.  It sounds better if you are going to the Crystal Coast for your beach vacation than it does if you say you are headed to Carteret County's beaches.

We are native North Carolinians and have lived here near the beaches of Emerald Isle for seven years. Obviously with that history in spite of our years in Canada, we are used to things being warm.  Coastal weather can be confusing and hard to predict, but for the most part if you love the out of doors,  our weather works out far better than the weather in an area like Washington or Northern Virginia.

It is not a secret that people have traveled to beaches for centuries to escape the heat.  While it still gets warm and humid here in the summer, we do not have to deal with the heat island effect that contributes to the warmth of Northern Virginia metro area.  It is interesting to note that Fairfax County has a thirty year urban tree canopy goal which will require it to plan over 60,000 more trees annually that when the goal was adopted in 2007.

We are lucky in Carteret County, a good portion of the Croatan National Forest's 159,000 acres are in our county. In addition to that 60% of the county is water.  We also have huge areas of marsh land and the 56 miles of Cape Lookout National Seashore.  All of those things contribute to an environment that is the opposite of an heat island.  If you factor in our coastal breeze and often cloud free skies (221 sunny days per year),  we have an environment which gets hot because it is in the south but is often pleasant because of the all the water and ocean breeze.  We also do not have the huge expanses of asphalt and concrete buildings that suck up heat and store it.  Until the area waters warm in late July and August, we have a big air conditioner.

Of course it does get hot here on the North Carolina coast.  It is the South and we cannot escape that.  However, water and nice breezes help us survive our hot times.  Ruffled waters in a 25 MPH breeze on cloudless nights is about as good a cooling effect as you can get in the South in the summer.

So if the heat of Reston, Northern Virginia or the District of the Columbia is starting to get to you, there is still plenty of room here on the coast.  The season has not been as busy as some and there are nice discounts available at some of the leading rental companies, including Bluewater Rentals and Emerald Isle Realty.  If you need more details about the area, check out my book, A Week at the Beach - The 2013 Emerald Isle Travel Guide.  The $4.99 cost will easily be recovered through tips in the book.

So what does a local do to stay cool. On Saturday morning, July 20, 2013, I was on the beach before 8AM  For the next two and one half hours I was in ocean water above my knees fishing.  There was a nice breeze and the skies were beautiful.  I did not catch any fish on that trip but fish are always optional when the scenery is beautiful and the weather is just right.  You can find pictures at this album.

 

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.

Reston, the epicenter of shopping

A little over a week ago, we were listening to the NBC national news while eating our dinner at our home along North Carolina's Crystal Coast.  My wife and I both got up out of our chairs when we heard Brian Williams do the lead-in for a story about shopping from Reston Town Center.

By the time we got to the television, the cameras were rolling in front of the skating rink in Reston. It was pretty neat to see a place that has figured so prominently in our family's lives over the years on national television.

I still remember visiting Reston for the first time in 1987 when people still thought Dulles Airport would never make it.  I wonder if any of those who doubted the success of the airport are still around to see all the construction of the new rail line.

Later in 1992, I moved the base of operations for my Apple higher education team to Apple's Reston, Va office which was on Preston White Drive for many years before moving over to Town Center.  There were numerous times that I stayed at the Hyatt in Town Center. I cannot even count the number of meetings and dinners that I survived in and around Town Center.  I can even remember being snowed in there one Friday in a December long ago.

I decided to stay in Reston that night rather than risk the long drive back down Interstate 81 to Roanoke, Va.  I was excited until I figured out that all the shops and services in Town Center had closed because of the snow.  I made my way out of town early the next morning.

It was not unusual during my many years of working out of the Reston area for my wife to accompany me for at least one trip during the Christmas season. She enjoyed being overwhelmed by the Reston and Northern Virginia shopping experience.

My oldest daughter and her college roommate from Sweet Briar stayed at the town center Hyatt using some of my travel points after they graduated and embarked on their first job hunting experience.

Of course over the years I have done a fair amount of shopping at Town Center.  In a certain metaphorical way, it is the center of North Virginia shopping located between Tyson's Corner and all the more western based shopping.  It was certainly an appropriate spot for the national news to talk about Christmas shopping.

It is funny that even by 2006 which was the last year I worked in Northern Virginia, I had stopped doing my Reston Town Center shopping trips.  Though I was staying not far off of Wiehle, it was still quicker and easier to head over to Tyson's Corner if you knew exactly where you were headed.  Tyson's Corner also generally had more convenient parking, not to mention LL Bean's, Levenger, and the Apple Store.

Still if you are interesting in shopping, the Reston area has just about everything that one could imagine. There is still no LL Bean's, but I used to joke that if you couldn't find it near Reston, it probably wasn't being built anywhere.  We still enjoy visiting our grown children who live in the area.  We still hit some of our favorite spots like Trader Joe's and LL Bean.

The five years since I last worked in Reston have taken us to the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina. It is much more peaceful on the coast of North Carolina than it is in Northern Virginia. As I am fond of mentioning, our parking spots are designed for extended cab trucks pulling a boat not a Toyota Prius with a bike rack.

The twenty minute trip to the shopping area in Morehead City is nothing like a run to Tyson's Corner.  While we find Belks, Walmart, TJ Maxx, and most of the smaller national stores, we still haven't gotten a Target.

Most of the truly local shopping has to come from Ace Hardware, Lowe's Home Improvement, Walgreen's. or some of the cute local shops in Swansboro.  It is a totally different shopping experience especially during the holiday season.  I am a little more geared to the laid back shopping experience now than I am to fighting for a parking space by Best Buy in Reston.  While we have a Best Buy in Morehead City, it is a baby one compared to the Reston one.

Every place has its good point, and shopping is one of Reston's which is why I guess it was featured on the national news.  Peace and quiet what you find at the beach in December.  The beach in the winter is about as far from the commercialism of the season as you can get.  Instead of extended hours, it is not unusual to find shortened hours. 

The different environment helps you to focus on what is important which happens to be the people in your life.  It also allows for the season to bring back some memories of Christmas trees from the past which is my favorite part of this time of year.

If the cold weather holds for December 26, we are hoping to make some peanut brittle which is a tradition that my mother kept up for most of our life.  Somehow doing peanut brittle seems a little more natural overlooking the mountains than within ear shot of the Toll Road.  Still I am sure there must be some great Reston Christmas traditions, maybe even some very good peanut brittle.  We are a lot closer to fresh peanuts.

The warm early winter that has made the east coast so comfortable has made for a very nice December at the beach. In fact the whole fall has been very pleasant.

There have been some stellar days over on the beach with shorts weather being very common.  It has been a season of where the signs of the changing season have yet to pan out.  Sometime the weather has been so good that I have been afraid that it would just disappear or that it was actually a dream.

Still I love to come visit Reston just because being there puts you in the middle of everything. By the same token, I also enjoy being on the side of a mountain high above the city or down on the coast where the nearest mall is 18 miles away.  Actually I really prefer having fish in my backyard to having a Target or a Walmart.

It is interesting that some of what made Reston unique has migrated to other spots.  We recently found a Trader Joe's just off Highway 64 in Cary, North Carolina. We even heard Wilmington, NC about an hour and a half from us is getting a Trader Joe's.  However, I think it is going to be a while before Reston is replaced as the epicenter of shopping.

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.

Not much sympathy for that Reston snow

There have been several years when I felt a good deal of sympathy for the icy world of Reston.  Last year in February Reston seemed to have moved itself to the Arctic.

This year has been different.  There has been no Snowmageddon.  In fact Reston has managed to miss almost all of the snowstorms that have rolled up the coast.

Now along North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks, we often get to enjoy some very nice winter temperatures.  Our December high temperatures average in the mid to upper fifties. This has been what my mother would have called an old-fashioned coastal winter.

We have had three snow storms.  While I would agree that Reston hasn't been basking in warmth, there has not been a lot of snow shoveling happening.

I know from experience that one of the bigger problems in most of Reston after a big storm is figuring out where to put the snow especially if you live in one of Reston's townhome complexes.  While Reston's planners thought about almost everything, they did not consider where to put snow after a series of storms.

While I have been there to do some shoveling myself, I have avoided it for the last few years.  I actually prefer my driveway shoveled by snow fairies which is what seems to happen here along the Southern Outer Banks.

We got a pretty good snow for our area, this past weekend.  Emerald Isle got seven inches and over here on the mainland a few miles from the beach we racked up four inches.  It was a pretty good snow job, but even with it sticking to the roads which is rare here, it disappeared by afternoon of the next day.

This morning we got up to a temperature of 54F which is a more normal winter temperature for us, but I know areas north and west of us, including Reston aren't having as nice a day.

It is just winter, and I have even reconciled myself to liking a storm or two down here on the coast.

Perhaps this will be a short-lived snow in Reston and not the beginning of the next Restonian ice age.

Actually I know that it does not take much snow to bring the Toll Road to a halt.  I heard a rumor that it happened with this most recent storm.  We all know the Washington area does not do well with snow, rain, or anything that might slow its world class traffic jams even further.

With that being the case, it might not be a bad idea to consider a much nicer spot if you have job that only requires an Internet connection.  The Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina is a nice mix of new and old.  You might not get all the shopping you find from living in Reston, but you might miss a few traffic jams in the process.

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.