The Crystal Coast, Salt water on my feet

Waiting for spring

Nice weather has paid some brief visits to the Crystal Coast, but it has been a little like riding a roller coaster. There can be cloudy, gloomy weather when you go in a building and sunny, warm weather when you come out fifteen minutes later. I guess that is the mark of spring weather.

We stopped to view some exhibits at a local museum the other day.  Our plans were to go hiking when we came out. We only tarried in the museum for an hour or so. In that short time whitecaps had formed on Bogue Sound, and the wind started blowing at twenty miles per hour.

In spite of the impossibility of out guessing the weather, we have had an enjoyable few days. Visiting some of our favorite places while we wait for spring to make our beach walks pleasant excursions is a great way to finish out winter.

Our first choice for fun was a visit to the Aquarium in Pine Knoll Shores. It has been one of our favorite places since we moved here. This time we decided to take the plunge and buy a family membership so we could enjoy visits even more frequently.

We were lucky to catch a presentation on North Carolina snakes as we walked into the building. My wife was very impressed with the corn snake that managed to crawl around the presenter's neck. I just wanted to get on to the fish.

After having all my Boy Scout snake knowledge refreshed, we got to the large aquarium tank just in time to see the divers descend. I actually only had eyes for three Red Drum that were swimming around the tank, but I will admit to enjoying the Goliath Grouper. I would like to see him when he reaches his maximum size of five hundred pounds. I would need more than a shark guidance pole before I went swimming with the sharks.

After the inside exhibits, we headed outside to check out the boardwalk and trails. The wind had picked up and kept us off the trails, but we saw a very cooperative juvenile Blue Heron who was quite happy to pose for pictures. I was very happy about that since the Great Blue Heron who lives behind our home in Bluewater Cove is telepathic. I know he knows when I start thinking about trying to sneak out to get a picture of him.

I posted some pictures of our trip to the NC Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores. I can highly recommend a visit.

Saturday it was warm enough for us to go on a short hike. Aside from the 1.5 inches of rain we got last Monday, we have had very little precipitation so the waters are very clear in the rivers. It was easy to see some oysters growing on the bottom along the dock at Bluewater Cove. The oysters reminded me that we have the annual Oyster Roast coming up soon on March 21 from 5 to 8 pm at the Swansboro Rotary Civic Center. Now there is an event no oyster lover should miss.

Sunday afternoon we decided to visit another of my favorite museums, the Maritime Museum in Beaufort. Not only is the Maritime Museum a great place to spend an afternoon, but it is also so free. They just ask for a donation. It is interesting to drop into the Museum on a windy cool day because we have used it as place to retreat from the August heat in Beaufort. Beaufort usually has a breeze, but when it does not and the heat is on, it is a good idea to find a cool spot like the museum.

It is hard to say what is my favorite part of the Maritime Museum, but I think it is all the different models of boats that have had such an important part in the history of North Carolina. Of course I love all the old motors and the exhibit of the life saving tools.

There are lots of interesting things on display from a few Blackbeard artifacts to whale bones. It is just a great place to visit. This is the only museum which has even entertained my son who enjoyed it even at the age of 29.

I also posted pictures of our visit to the Maritime Museum at Beaufort. The pictures do not do it justice, so take my suggestion and plan a trip there soon.

Just to finish our spurt of activities to distract us from the weather, we drove up to Harkers Island today. That is where I took the picture in this post. Of course the picture is of the Cape Lookout Lighthouse taken from the shore parking lot.

If you are interesting in seeing more of my pictures and having them placed on a map, visit my Panoramio site.

The where do I live equation

I have had the pleasure and honor of working with many young people over the years as they have tried to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives and where they wanted to do it.

As almost anyone knows, there is no easy solution.  Many times a job dictates where you live.  Sometimes a job takes you to a place, and you never leave.  You end up loving the place, and everyone lives happily ever after.

There are people among us who need to be inspired by where they live. I will admit to being one of those people. For years I wanted to live in Canada.  There were a lot of reasons, but the challenge of the climate, the beauty of the wilderness, and the sense of having survived in a tough environment all played a part.

When I got a job with Apple Computer in 1984, where I lived ended up not being as important as working for Apple.  Eventually with growing children, where I lived once again became very important to me.  I even took myself off the management track so that we could settle on the side of a mountain overlooking Roanoke, Virgina.  It turned out to be a wonderful place to raise a family, and I ended up a manager at Apple in spite of where I was living.

Once I became a manager, I had the choice of moving away from Roanoke back to Northern Virginia where my office was located.  We weighed the decision and decided that we were done moving while our kids were in school.  Three moves over the space of five years was plenty to absorb.

That decision meant a lot of travel for me. Specifically three weeks out of the month, I would leave Roanoke and drive nearly four hours to my office.  For years I stayed in hotels until my daughter graduated college and ended up in a town house where I managed to secure a bedroom.

Our living in Roanoke came down to my willingness to accept the burden of travel and make the best of it.

Tonight I was reading the response of a forum member on City-Data to someone who wants to live on the North Carolina coast near the beach.  The forum member found travel in Eastern, NC "tedious."

As someone who traveled the Shenandoah Valley so much that I could estimate my arrival time to within a minute, I probably could have found my travel "tedious."  But I did not.  Travel was my willing sacrifice for living where we wanted to live.  I might complain about it, but it became part of my life.

I would never discourage someone from making the necessary trade-off in order to able to live in a place that inspires them or makes their heart beat a little faster.  Life is too short.

Perhaps our forum member would suggest that the young person yearning to live near a beach pick a town along Interstate 95 and live there because travel is "easier."  It might be easier but the beach is over 100 miles away instead of ten minutes.

Choosing to live along Interstate 95 is a lousy decision to make if you are already fortunate enough to be able to pick where you live.  Who cares how much you have to travel if you are happy?

Why not pick a place where you will be happy and consider whatever extra travel that necessitates a price well worth paying?

After all, I doubt that you can find a place nicer than the North Carolina coast on February 8, 2009.  It was one spectacular day.

There are more thoughts on this on my View from the Mountain blog.

Thoughts of spring strawberries

This was written on April 14, 2007.  Unfortunately Bucks Corner Farm is no longer operating, but my understanding is that someone leased their strawberry patch and that there will be 2009 berries available.

This is published to help us survive until spring.

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The local strawberries are here. As far as I am concerned they are the first taste of summer.  It is a delicious way to start the local produce season.  This afternoon I dropped by Bucks Corner Farm, just off of Route 58 a little less than two miles before the intersection with Route 24 in Cape Carteret.

Bucks Corner Farm has signs out on 58 or you can call them at 252 241-2755, 241-2240, or 241-4854 for more information or to place orders.  It is obviously a great family operation which works very hard to put quality fresh produce on our tables.

I managed to get to the farm just as they were about to sell out of today's berries, but the ladies assured me there would be lots more on Saturday.  The buying experience does not get any better, fresh berries and friendly ladies.

We first discovered Bucks Corner Farm last summer when we were getting ready to close on our house in Bluewater Cove.  We managed to sample lots of their produce including tomatoes and those famous watermelons.  I really looking forward to enjoying all the vegetables as they come in this spring. 

I believe I heard them say that there will some hot house tomatoes ready soon.  They can't be soon enough for that first tomato sandwich of the year.

I certainly I enjoyed the strawberries this afternoon.   It is not often you get produce right from the farm these days. Later this evening I made myself a strawberry-banana smoothie so I am down to half a box and will have try to get some more in the next few days. 

We are really blessed to have strawberry fields this close to Cape Carteret.  Folks who have lived here a while might take them for granted, but once you live in the city and are forced to accept strawberries shipped in from California, your really appreciate what our local farmers can produce. The California berries are not nearly as good as the local ones.

I am really happy that the folks over at Bucks Corner Farm were able to protect their strawberries from the big freeze and snow last week. The farmers up the central part of North Carolina or  the mountain valleys near Roanoke, Va. where our other home is were not able to do anything to save their berries from what I've heard.

We need to enjoy wonderful berries.  I have a feeling that fresh strawberries and other fruits are going to be valuable items this year thanks to that Canadian cold that hit us. 

Now if I just had my old White Mountain ice cream freezer down here, I might be convinced to make some homemade ice cream.  I am sure someone would prevent me from using all the cream that it needs so I would be content if we could just make some strawberry freezer jam like we did last year.  When you open a jar of that in the winter time, it is like opening a jar of summer.

Eight weeks until the great tomato race

This post was written April 3, 2008.  I offer it up as a reminder that warmer times are on the way.

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Tomatoes take on an uncharacteristic importance in the South.

If you add a little bacon and lettuce for variety, some folks, myself included, can come close to living on tomatoes when they are in season.

Just any tomato will not do, they have to be home grown ones picked fresh off the vines that have been carefully tended.

For many years I was a second class tomato gardener because I had to convince them to grow on Canada's east coast.

We often had some very nice tomatoes late in August if were lucky.  My mother and my wife's father were both extraordinary tomato gardeners.  Of course growing tomatoes near Mount Airy, NC is a little different than growing them along the Bay of Fundy where 70 degrees is a warm summer day.

A few years ago, after moving to Roanoke, VA, I decided to record on my blog how I grow tomatoes in case my kids ever got the fever.  My first post on tomatoes was The Spring Tomato Ritual.

The next year I started with The great tomato race is on!.  My annual attempt to produce a fourth of July tomato had turned into a race with my good friend Mike who still lives in Lewisville, NC where he and I used to roam the woods as kids while our parents grew tomatoes.

Now I have well over fifty posts on tomatoes including The world's ugliest tomatoes, Tomato Hunter's Paradise, and last year's concession.

Last year was my first year gardening on the coast.  A year's experience is going to help, and I have gone with three varieties this year.  One is a 55 day variety so we will see how things stack up this year when the first tomatoes are sliced.

My plants went into the ground on April 3 this year.  That is a little over a month earlier than last year's May 5 planting date.

Still for all I know, Mike has heat lamps beside his already.  He will not be defeated easily, and I also have picked up a local challenger. 

Another friend, Dean, has had his tomato plants in the ground for a while.  He is from above the Mason Dixon line so he will have to be watched closely to gauge whether he will be serious competition or not.

We should have a lot of fun, and I will post updates, maybe even photos of the other gardens.

Other gardeners are not the only competition, I also have to battle the tomato horn worms and the fiddler crabs who developed a real taste for tomatoes last year.

That first sandwich in late June (I hope) will be well worth all the effort especially if the vines last into December like they did last year.

This year we ate our last home grown tomato in late January.

Good news on the Crystal Coast

I am about ready to stop listening to the national news.  The news seems uniformly bad and seems to color perspectives on a local economy that is showing both some new life and some resilience.

A new Harris Teeter grocery store is set to open on February 11 in Morehead City.  This comes on top of the Panera, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Bed Bath and Beyond opening in the last year.

On top of that we have seen more activity in the real estate market in the last few weeks than we have in a while.  I heard that our company already has fifteen closings scheduled this month. One of the best signs that I have noticed is that lot prices are finally coming down.

Home prices have been declining for a couple of years, but in general lot prices had stayed steady.  Few lots had sold and the challenges of financing lots have gotten greater over the last several months.  Now it is very hard to buy a lot for an investment.  However, if you are looking for a lot to perhaps build a second home or a retirement home, there is money for that as long as you have good credit.

From what I am hearing from builders, now is actually a very good time to build.  Material costs have come down, and there is certainly no challenge in finding a hungry builder.

New home starts nationwide continue to fall, but as is always the case, we will eventually work through the inventory of new homes.  It will happen at different times in different places.  Some places are much more overbuilt than others.  In areas with a really excessive number of new homes, it is likely that foreclosures are driving the prices.

All of this means that this is a good time to be an area that did not fly so high in the real estate bubble. Here on the Crystal Coast, the number of foreclosures are very small.  There are no large plants to lay off thousands of workers, but of course here finding jobs was a challenge even in good times.

Still as the economy rights itself and homes become easier to sell, a number of people will be looking for areas which make a good home for retirees or people trying to escape the cities.

While no place is perfect, North Carolina's Crystal Coast still has plenty going for it.  It still remains relatively undiscovered which means it is not overcrowded even in the summer.

The access to the area from the west is generally by high quality four lane roads.  The schools are excellent with our local high school, Croatan, recently winning an award as one of the top six hundred high schools in the US.

We have a very unique combination of beaches, sounds, and coastal rivers which work together to make the area a wonderful playground for boaters, fishermen, kayakers, and people who just love the ocean.

The area continues to grow slowly and attract modern services.  While some areas have new shopping centers sitting idle, we have a very nice centrally located modern retail center developing on the western side of Morehead City.  It is easily accessible from either the western or eastern areas in the county.

On top of the national stores coming into the area, we continue to have a very healthy market for locally owned businesses especially small restaurants which seem to do well at surviving the seasonal nature of our market.

As the warmth of the February sun starts to be felt, rental statistics are only showing a 5% drop in booking so far this summer.  If that trend continues, we will have a good summer, especially compared to those areas which are already seeing a 30-35% drop in summer reservations.

Of course it is a long time to summer, but we are getting ready to move into the festival season.  Now that the sun will soon be bringing some serious warmth, we can hope that in the next few months people, fish, and the economy will once again be stirring.

Next weekend is the Chocolate Festival in Morehead City, and coming in the middle of March is the Swansboro Oyster Roast which is a favorite event of mine.

You can keep up with Crystal Coast events by visiting the Crystal Coast Web Village.  This is a map of the area and this is an index of posts done about the area where we live in a subdivision called Bluewater Cove.  Finally this is a link to my blog on the area which I try to update frequently.

There are still seats in the sun available here on the coast.