Beach Walk Weather

Posted on May 20, 2013 by dsobotta
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The Beach Near Eastern Regional Access, Emerald Isle, NC

The Beach Near Eastern Regional Access, Emerald Isle, NC

Living along North Carolina’s Southern Outer Banks tends to spoil a person.  We like our weather warm but not too hot.  Cold weather which is often defined as anything under fifty degrees Fahrenheit is not welcome even in winter.

Skies are supposed to blue while our ocean water should stick with that beautiful emerald color that we often see when the light is just right.  Yet even in our coastal paradise sometimes we have to endure weather outside our comfort zone.

Spring of 2013 has been one of those seasons to challenge our weather expectations.  The warmth lovers among us including plants like tomatoes which thrive in the heat, have found much of  April and May 2013 to be relatively cool.  It has taken us a while to get to proper “Beach Walk” weather.

Early warm weather like March of 2012 almost seems like a North Carolina birthright, but we all know weather is nothing if not unpredictable.  Still a couple of months like April and May of 2013 when we just cannot seem to regularly reach those really nice spring temperatures that so often define our Crystal Coast weather throws a loop into our plans.

That is especially the case when your plans are to walk all the beaches inside the town limits of Emerald Isle.  For the last couple of years I have given myself the task of walking from the most northerly part of the beach on Bird Island near Bogue Inlet to the “Welcome to Emerald Isle” sign which is on the beach between Emerald Isle and Salter Path, North Carolina.  The approximately 12.5 miles of beach is not a huge distance, but I often end up walking something closer to 18 or 19 miles because I sometimes have to walk parts of the beach, turn around and walk the same beach to get back to my car.

When I first started doing this a few years ago, I had no idea that I would get so addicted to walking the beaches and that it would become so easy given the right weather. While I usually manage to get some beach walking in during all the months of the year, late spring is my favorite time.

The weather is usually pleasant and vehicles except for emergency ones are banned on the beach.  There are few fishermen to dodge and most of the ones fishing in the spring are courteous enough to not block the beach access with their lines.

This year I had to pick my time for beach walks.  Since the ocean water is usually in the seventies this time of year,  walking the beach when the air temperature is in the upper seventies to the mid-eighties is a nearly perfect scenario.  Those are the average temperatures we usually enjoy in Emerald Isle during May and June.

As is often the case even when you have some flexibility in your schedule, the weather rarely cooperates.  During the middle of April when there was a little spell of warm weather, I was tied up getting our book, A Week At The Beach – The 2013 Emerald Isle Travel Guide, published.  From the third week in April until the middle of May, we did not have a lot of great beach walking weather.  I managed to snare a few days, but it was only last week just after the middle of May when the great days for walking the beach were stacked up, one after the other.

I took advantage of the great weather and finished my first 2013 hike of all beaches of Emerald Isle.  It was good to get done while the beaches are practically empty.  Memorial Day is not far away and the small crowds that find our beach will not stop me from walking the beaches, but it always nice to finish a task even when it a pleasant one like walking the beaches.

I always have a camera with me.  This year my choice was a new Canon SX50 HS that I got in March.  It usually takes me a while to choose my best beach pictures, but I have posted an album which has many bird pictures from my walks this spring both on the beach and along the marshes.

 

 

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Unexpected weather

Posted on May 10, 2013 by dsobotta
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Blue water and skies viewed from Raymond's Gut

Blue water and skies viewed from Raymond’s Gut

To be honest most weather here along the coast is unexpected, but I certainly do not blame our hardworking weather folks.  With so many of us living near bodies of water with different temperatures, I am surprised that our forecasts are as accurate as they are.

Still once in a while I have to call our coastal forecasters to account.  Going into the first weekend of May 2013, the forecasts were calling for practically a washout for the early part this past week.  Turns out we had very little rain.  After a couple of afternoons with brief cloudy spells, this second week of May has been perhaps the nicest week this spring.  We slept with our windows open last night, and as noon approaches I still have my office window open so I can enjoy the cool breeze while I finish my morning writing.

We finally got some real warmth as we managed to get up over 80F on Thursday, May 9.  That was actually a treat and I celebrated by going for a beach walk.  I am “working hard” to complete my annual Emerald Isle beach survey before Memorial Day.  That means I have to walk all the beaches in the town limits from Bird Island just North of the Point to the “Welcome to Emerald Isle” sign down the beach near Salter Path.

It is really not too difficult a challenge mostly because I walk all the time and I love to walk on the beach. The biggest obstacle is that I frequently stop and take pictures.  Usually I have to walk all the beach twice because my wife generally is not very interested in coordinating her trips so that I can drop off a vehicle and get myself dropped at another part of the beach.   I am used to walking down the beach and returning to where I started.  However, she seems to be weakening a little this year on her stance.  She has at least agreed to one or two drop offs.  That might let me meet my goal of finishing by Memorial Day.

Of course to do that I have to stay focused and out of the kayak and our skiff.  This unexpected batch of really nice weather makes it very hard to choose what to do.  If I start catching some fish which given my recent luck is highly unlikely, things might get even more complicated.

This week’s boat rides, kayaking and beach walks have all been spectacular.  Swansboro’s Harbour was picture perfect when I idled through on May 7.  The picture at the top of the post was taken on May 8 when I went kayaking.  There certainly was nothing wrong with the beach as you can see from this picture of the Bogue Inlet Pier taken on my May 9 hike from the Western Regional Beach Access to the pier.

Friday May 10, looks to be so nice that I suspect that I will find it hard to stay off the beach.  Saturday is supposed to also be nice, but unfortunately I will be sitting in a classroom taking my annual real estate training which lets me keep my license so I can keep a toe in the real estate world when I choose to do so.  Few people who have gotten their real estate license ever want to contemplate having to do all their initial training and exams again. That is exactly what you have to do if do not keep your training current and your license lapses.

Even with having to take a classroom day, it is nice to see spring finally on track, the winter wheat looks like it is in great shape.  Our vegetables are doing fine but I doubt that we will have any ripe tomatoes by the end of May this year, but that just means that they will taste even better when they are ripe.  This weather has been perfect for lettuce.  We have really enjoyed feasting on our homegrown lettuce for the last several weeks. It is so much better than what you get from the store that it is even hard to describe. Our lettuce would not have lasted as long if our spring had been a hot one.  The first time that I got my toes in the saltwater in 2013 was over six weeks later than in 2012 when I wrote Water that is begging to be waded.

As is always the case, we take whatever weather is served up and are happy to be here on the Crystal Coast to enjoy it.  I like to think nice weather in May is a tradition here along North Carolina’s coast no matter what the forecasters tell us to expect.

 

 

 

Posted in Beach, Crystal Coast, Kayaking, Out of doors, Southern Outer Banks, water, Weather | 1 Comment

The North Carolina Miracle

Posted on April 29, 2013 by dsobotta
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North Carolina Waters

North Carolina Waters

The other day someone commented to us that the state where they were born was a good place “to be from.”  The implication was that their home state was not a good place to live.  Somehow those of us who were born in North Carolina have never had to worry about that.

When you are young, you spend very little time worrying about where you were born.  Just about all my world was North Carolina and I thought about little else.  In the summer when we vacationed, we either went to the North Carolina mountains or to the North Carolina beaches.

I cannot remember meeting anyone from outside the state in those early years.  I do have vague memories of one of my teachers not being from our state but I think she went to college here.   I can remember a few students moving to school but if they were from outside the state,  that did not stick with me.

I can remember going for a vacation once at Virginia Beach and another time at Folly Beach in South Carolina.  Both trips just reminded us how lucky we were to be living in North Carolina.  Sometime after I was ten years old, I remember visiting Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  At the time it was a quiet, small town in the Smoky Mountains, and my mother developed a fondness for it.  Even at that early age, North Carolina’s Outer Banks still had my heart.

I loved to go to the beaches.  My mother would fill her 1952 Ford with my teenage cousins and off we would go with a picnic basket and thoughts of sand and surf.  Visiting the beach for those of us from rural North Carolina and in the fifties and sixties that covered just about the whole state was a magical journey.

It was so different from the rest of our summer that its impact stayed with us for a long time.  Our lives in North Carolina’s Piedmont were not bad by any means, but they were lives defined by small towns.   In Lewisville, North Carolina, where I spent my early years, the town had a feed mill, two general stores, a hardware, a post office, a doctor who made house calls, eventually a small grocery store, and a tiny restaurant.  We did have a lot of churches.  Everyone went to church.  In the summer, we wandered the woods, fished if we could find a spot, and dreamed of going to the beach.

Only when I turned twelve did we find a Boy Scout troop to join.  It was several miles away but in a year or so we started our own troop in Lewisville.  Being a Boy Scout was a wonderful thing for the boys that found their way to the troop.  You got to go off to summer camp.  If you added summer camp to a beach vacation of a couple of weeks, and some swimming lessons via the old activity bus at school, you ended up with a pretty nice summer.  Sunday afternoons were always for visiting relatives and mine who were centered in Yadkin County always seemed to have homemade ice cream or watermelon for us to enjoy under the shade trees.  That we had a friend who used to bring us some of his vinegar-based barbecue from Kernersville to sample just completes the picture.

It was a North Carolina life which kept me from being worried about others having a better life.  We had lots of fried chicken on Sunday, plenty of summer tomato sandwiches and home-canned green beans all through the winter.  That others might be living a different way was of no concern.

When I got sent off to military school in Tennessee at the ripe old age of thirteen, the whole experience reinforced my love of North Carolina.  In North Carolina after school in the fall we put shotguns on our shoulders and walked the woods and fields looking for small game.  On the weekends we often went camping with other Boy Scouts.  In Tennessee, I marched with a M1 on my shoulder and we only got to leave campus on Saturday afternoon for a little fun and then again on Sunday morning for church.

For reasons I still do not understand, I ended up in college in Cambridge which somehow led me to a life in Canada.  That I married a North Carolina girl is no surprise.  The first time that we vacationed with our children on a North Carolina beach, I suspect the seeds were planted for us to come back to North Carolina and eventually live near the beaches.

That our state has changed a lot in the last fifty years is unquestionable.  I take some degree of pride in the fact that one of my college roommates from Massachusetts now lives in North Carolina.  In those early years he sometimes kidded me about being from North Carolina. Now he is learning to appreciate our great state.  Going to college in the Northeast from the South in the sixties meant you were one of a very few from our state who made it into what had been almost private clubs for many students from the Northeast.

While some might have challenged my birth state, I do not think I was ever ashamed of being born in North Carolina.  That I once ran barefooted on red dirt roads is something that I remember with pride.  I can still hear the shouts of fun as we played capture the flag at night with fireflies all around us.  I remember the cold mountain waters that we swam in as Boy Scouts.  Most of all I remember the smell of the salt air and the warm ocean waters on my feet as we wandered the beaches.

North Carolina has changed but in a sense it still has much of the charm that it had in my youth.  Perhaps youngsters can no longer roam the woods after school like we did, but they can still walk North Carolina’s wonderful beaches and still camp in its magnificent mountain parks.

I am proud that it is still possible to have a wonderful vacation on North Carolina’s coast.  I might even argue that you can even have a vacation reminiscent of those we had in the fifties and sixties if you leave the smartphone and iPods at home.

To me, that it is the real miracle of North Carolina.  Fifty years of transformation have not destroyed the beauty of our state. It is still a good place to be born and a great place to live.  I hope that does not change.

As for those beach vacation of my youth, do not miss the free download days, May 1 & 2, for our new A Week at the Beach – The 2013 Emerald Isle Travel Guide. It is a beach lover’s guide to loving the beach.

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Spring Waters

Posted on April 25, 2013 by dsobotta
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bluewatercove

Raymond’s Gut Inlet from my Kayak

Each spring presents its own challenges.  The spring of 2013 has shown us yet another pattern.   There is not nearly as much warmth as we enjoyed during the spring of 2012.  Moisture also has not been lacking like it was in the spring of 2011.  Even during the last days of April we have seen some early morning temperatures in the low forties.

Still it has been a pleasant spring and the only serious heat we have endured was on a trip to Northern Virginia during their brief hot spell around April 10.  It has been a while since I have managed to slide my kayak into the water, but a few days ago I felt the need to change that.

Maybe it was just the nice day and the blue sky reflected on the water that got me motivated to paddle out to the river.  It could have been the fishing license that I renewed earlier in the day or just the desire to get away from my desk and the computer.

The computer has been my ball and chain recently as I have worked to finish our revised Emerald Isle Travel Guide for 2013.  Writing a book can be a very solitary experience but with all the technical challenges of self-publishing, it can also be frustrating.

I certainly needed some time in my kayak.  It was also nice to wet a line even though I did not see a fish other than a mullet which seemed to be trying to jump into my kayak.  I have never had a lot of early spring fishing luck.  However, as I have often said, you do not need to catch fish to benefit from some time fishing.

It takes me about ten to fifteen minutes to paddle from our dock to near the middle of the White Oak River. The wind direction makes a big difference and it is a little hard to tell exactly the where the middle of the river is when you are sitting on the water in a kayak in a river nearly two miles wide.  I started my paddling on a falling tide late in the day so I knew from the start that my journey would last less than two hours.

Still those two hours broke the routine that I had faced.  The time on the water cleared my head and gave me renewed energy to tackle the final details of the book.  I will have more time to fish now that the book is done in time for the travel season.  My self-imposed deadline of the the third week of April was a challenge given that I just finished another book, A Taste of the Wild, Canada’s Maritimes, on March 1.  Actually the hardest part is promoting a self-published book, but I do not plan to let that get in the way of my season of fishing.

I moved to the coast to live a different way and part of that is learning the right balance of play and work.  I have worked very hard getting the books out.  Now I hope to have some fun in my kayak and skiff as the waters warm up.  There are some fish that need to be caught.

The best part of kayaking is always coming back into the inlet.  On my recent trip, the blue reflected in the dark waters made for a great picture that I used in this post.  Once inside the inlet, I was away from the winds out on the river.  The few degrees of extra warmth felt nice as the day began to cool.  With no wind I could glide along towards my home dock with almost no effort or thought.  It was a good way to end the day.

The short kayak trip made me anxious to get back out on the river and spend some time sitting on my favorite oyster rocks.  Hopefully it will not be long before the winds and weather conspire to get me out on the water once again.  Being on the water is part of life here, and it does provide some balance that is sorely missing in many urban areas.

Don’t miss our free down load days next week.  We hope a lot of people will take the time to enjoy our beach lovers guide to loving the beach.

Posted in Crystal Coast, Kayaking, Out of doors, Uncategorized, water, Weather | 1 Comment

The End of the Sand

Posted on April 8, 2013 by dsobotta
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totheendsofoursandwm

Looking South from the Northern End of the Point

The more complex our world gets, the more we need to distance ourselves from it.   I am blessed to be living in an unbelievably beautiful place where I can easily escape the daily pressures of life.   Retreating to nature has always helped me and living where nature is at my doorstep keeps life’s irritations mostly under control.

Things were different before we moved here. When life in the corporate world got tough, I would retreat to a hiking trail I maintained high on the side of a mountain near Roanoke, Virginia.  There with my Labrador pal, Chester, I could recharge my batteries and find some insight to help me survive another quarter.

Even the mountain trail was not enough at times.  More than once I can remember fleeing to Cape Hatteras and checking into a motel with only pay phones and no cell service.  My situation was far from unique.  Modern life takes its toll on humans.  Sometimes getting away from our connected world is the only solution.

I actually can easily tell the symptoms in others.  You send them an email and the only thing they read before they respond is the title.  Years ago people would take two or three weeks of vacation and try to decompress.  Today folks are afraid to leave work for that long because they might not have a job when they come back.  If you only take a week away from your job, you probably have not really left it behind especially if you are working weekends just so you can go on vacation.

While money is a lot harder to come by outside of corporate America, life is much more rewarding.  There are still pressures and things which need to be done and make no sense, but you do have more control and that in itself is rewarding.

Now when I seek out a wild place, it is not so much to help me recover but just to appreciate the beauty of it and to share it with others.  I consider myself extremely fortunate that I can still take the long walks needed to find the wildness that has helped me so much during my life.

Living in a special place like the Crystal Coast gives me a lot of choices when I want to go view our world as few see it today.  Whether I put the kayak in Raymond’s Gut and paddle out to the middle of the White Oak River or take my skiff down the river to the marshes between Swansboro and Bear Island, I rarely have trouble finding a private place.  Not many people wander the salt marshes.

Yet among all the wild places that I love, one stands head and shoulders above the rest.  It is the Point on Emerald Isle.  Perhaps having over forty years of history with one piece of sand helps, but I think it is more than that.  First, it is one of those places where civilization seems a lot farther away than it actually is.  Second, it is never the same and I know that the ocean can reclaim it at any moment.   The stunning beauty that I see at the Point never fails to inspire me.

I doubt there is any other place on the North Carolina coast where you can park your car and walk less than two miles along the beach and find yourself in a place so unique and so much a part of nature.

The Point is a battleground where the ocean and sound vie for position. Wind, water, and waves continually change the battlefield and we get to watch.  The stark beauty of the sand and water stretching as far as the eye can see is impossible to convey in just a few pictures.  A recent online photo album which I am preparing for our updated 2013 Emerald Isle travel guide has nearly ninety pictures in it, and I still feel that it barely let you taste the Point’s beauty.  You can sample a few of the pictures in this album.  You will have to wait for my new Kindle book to see the full photo album.

There are some other places in the world where I have perhaps dreamed of hiking, but unfortunately I would have to go through far too much civilization to get to those places.  It would take something very spectacular to get me to travel very far from these beaches that I love so much.

Spring has just gotten here so the best part of the year is still to come for beach lovers.  It will not be long before I will be wading the waters along the shore and sometimes even carrying a fishing rod along with my camera.  First the water will be a shock to the system, then it will feel refreshing in the heat of July, and finally in the fall, the water is sometimes warmer than the air.

I know that I am lucky to living where I am living.  You give up a few things to live in a place this beautiful and peaceful, but you get so much more in return.  As my t-shirt says, “Never Look Back.”

 

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Hello from Emerald Isle

Posted on March 31, 2013 by dsobotta
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bougesoundwmThe season is officially open and our first visitors are here on the coast.   All of us would be happier with better weather but you take what you get with weather.  Fortunately this cooler than normal first day of the beach season did not scare away our early season visitors.  This last weekend of March, 2013, was actually one of the warmer set of days during the last half of the month.  Sunday would have been a very nice day without the constant wind blowing at ten to twenty miles per hour.

We have enjoyed only a few really nice days in March including the Saturday of the annual Emerald Isle Saint Patrick’s Day festival.  However, even the nice days have been cooler than normal.  In March of 2012 most of our temperatures were above normal.  This year most of the temperatures have been ten to twenty degrees below normal.  We did get a cool spell in early April of last year.  Maybe this year we will get a warm spell.

Spring 2013, has not given us a consistent period of warm temperatures like we got in the spring of 2012.  The result is that the area’s waters remain relatively cold and when the wind is blowing off the water like it is today, it feels cold even when the thermometer tells you that it is not particularly cold.

My tomatoes went into the ground just one day earlier this year, March 18, 2013, than they did in 2012 when I planted them on March 19.  However,  they have grown very little and today’s constant wind will not help them any.

Last year, the final week of March was so warm that the water was begging to be waded.  This year, we had three days that started with frost.  It took until the end of the week before we managed to barely work our way into the sixties.  The water just does not looking inviting yet.

Still spring is moving along at its own pace while Carteret County and its beach towns are getting the last few details ironed out before a new beach season.  The beaches look to be in great shape to start the season.  Just a few days ago there were still pipes on the beach from the winter beach nourishment projects.

Given the less than desirable weather, I was wondering if the crowds would still come.  Finding an answer was almost easy. I was doing some mapping of trails late on Friday afternoon so I was across the bridge a couple of times.  Fortunately the bridge repair project is on hold for a few days because there was a lot of traffic coming across from the mainland. Traffic on the bridge is always a good way to judge the number of beach visitors.

I took the time to drive down to heart of the town of Emerald Isle, the stoplight by Bogue Inlet Drive which leads to the fishing pier.   On my short trip there I noticed all the signs of a good early season crowd.  Jordan’s Seafood looked to be packed and the Food Lion parking lot also had  only a few unoccupied spaces and it was busier than I have seen it since the holidays.  When I drove over on the mainland to T&W’s Oyster Bar and circled through their parking lot, there were no open parking spots and plenty of cars were parked on the grass.

While the trails at both the Croatan Recreation area in Cedar Point and the ones in Emerald Woods were not crowed, they are in great shape for the season.  I walked the big loop trail at Croatan and the Emerald Woods trail late Friday afternoon. They are two of my favorite trails.  I love the bridges across the marshes on the Croatan Trails and The Emerald Isle Bridge also looks nice in the afternoon sun from the little pier at Emerald Woods.

The Food Lion grocery store on Emerald Isle might be a little crowded, but I suspect all the grocery stories are busy with all the holiday meals being planned.  I know the stores  in Morehead City were packed on this holiday weekend.  Saturday I picked up a toner cartridge at Staples and we drove over to Belk’s but decided not to stop when we saw the packed parking lot.

The vast majority of us welcome the tourists back with open arms each year.   Tourists are our area’s lifeblood and help justify some of the stores and services that we enjoy all year.  Our visitors are not here very long.   At best they have three months or so to enjoy the beaches and area waters before they leave everything to us.  Those of us who live here enjoy the beaches and water almost all year.

Even during the peak season it is pretty easy to get away from the crowds here on the Crystal Coast.  All you have to do is walk out on the Point and go beyond the houses.  The number of people drops off dramatically.

I am hoping to have the 2013 version of our Emerald Isle Travel Guide ready in the next week to ten days so a cooler than normal start to the season just gives me a little more time to finish.  Even with the cooler weather it is still beautiful here on the coast along North Carolina’s Southern Outer Banks.  The picture at the top of the post was taken from the pier at Emerald Woods looking east along Bogue Sound. Consider it a  welcome to the beach picture.

I hope our visitors will love the area enough to want to know more about it and perhaps even get one of our travel guides for 2013.  The new one will be available before the middle of April and will be priced at $4.99.

 

 

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Our Coastal Spring Is On Track

Posted on March 23, 2013 by dsobotta
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bwcmarch22

All it takes is a little slightly cold weather and the warmth loving souls living along North Carolina’s coast start to believe that spring has forsaken us.  The truth is that it is just weather. If you can be patient and wait just a little, the weather will change.

This spell of cool weather is not like a drought which can start in the spring and get worse as the year progresses.  We will be shedding clothes here on the Southern Outer Banks long before the memory of these cool nights has had a chance to fade away.

This is nothing new.  I offer up as evidence a few tidbits.  This comes from a post, Spring is Getting Here,  that I wrote on March 27, 2009.

Spring always takes its time arriving here at the coast.  We get some of the trappings of spring.  The Bradford pear trees bloom. Dandelions bloom.  Our daffodils bloom so early that they almost seem like a winter flower.  In truth spring is a slow event on the coast because the water warms up slowly.

Inland spring seem to happen quicker.  The inland varieties of grass even turn green quicker than ours.  In the end the slowly warming waters moderate the summer heat for us usually until July.  Even then we get cool ocean breezes which usually protect us from the heat extremes.

That statement pretty well covers what happens in spring here in Carteret County.  Our normally protracted spring is not a bad way to have spring. It is also not the only way that spring is experienced down here on the coast.

Last year I wrote a post called Spring on the Crystal Coast.  In it I had this to say about spring.

The spring of 2012 is my sixth spring on the Crystal Coast.  They have all proved to be different.

I enjoy spring unfolding along the coast. It is a lot more subtle than spring coming to the mountains.

While each spring has been different, there are things we can count on in our roller-coaster of spring weather.

Those things are “wind, blue skies, and moderate temperatures.” I would add that in most years we experience an abundance of sunshine.  I will certainly take our coastal spring to what you might find in the mountains or the areas to the north of us.

We are on track with our weather.  The Bradford pear trees are blooming and the daffodils are struggling to get all their blooms open.  My tomato plants are in the ground and they went in only one day earlier than I planted them last year. There was a threat of frost this week but it was just a threat which is often the case here by the water.

Spring in the mountains or the North is not so nice.  It is punctuated with snow and sometimes lots of it.  All you have to do is look at this picture sent by our friend, Alberta, who lives between Hartland and Florenceville, New Brunswick.  It was taken the morning of March 20, 2013 just after a snow storm delivered 20 inches of snow.  It was enough to keep her husband, George, busy moving snow for a few hours.  Or you could glance at this picture taken by Brenda, another New Brunswick friend, who lives a little over 70 miles away in Tay Creek, New Brunswick.  Brenda told me that her husband, Kerry, only reported 16 inches of snow.

Actually you don’t have to go that far away to experience March snow.  For over twenty years we lived in Roanoke, Virginia on the side of a mountain.  It is just over 300 miles north and west of the Cape Carteret area.  Spring snow is nothing unusual in the Virginia mountains.  In fact those very same mountains and perhaps even parts of North Carolina might be in for a taste of snow this next to last weekend in March, 2013, as a big storm swings across the country.  Roanoke has a winter storm warning with the possibility of one to three inches of snow.

Fortunately snow just slows down spring but never stops it.  One of my favorite things about living in the South is that you can watch spring unfold more than once if you plan your travels carefully.  We have often traveled from Roanoke, Virginia, to Cornelius, North Carolina, and then made our way back to the beach.  You can leave Roanoke with spring breaking out all over the place, descend back into winter as you climb the mountains to Hillsville, Virginia, only to have a full blown spring unfold in front of you as you come down Fancy Gap into North Carolina’s Piedmont.

In 2012 we did one of those trips.  By the time we got to Cornelius we found dogwoods in full bloom and our granddaughter wading in the water in Lake Norman. It almost felt like summer.  When we got to the coast, things had cooled off and we got to enjoy another spring.

Every year is different.  You can read about March, 2011, and March, 2012, and compare them yourself.  I know only one thing for certain about the weather.  It will not be long before we will be playing the heat pump game.  Only weeks after that we will be hoping for any cool air that we can find.  Then we will retreat to the water, and none of us have a problem with that.

I for one am not going to wish away the pleasant spring breezes so quickly.  While spring has been cool this year compared to 2012, it is predicted to warm up once we get through the last week of March.  Heat is welcome, but it eventually becomes an unwelcome guest sometime in August.

Still enjoying the differences in the seasons is one of the reasons we live on the North Carolina Coast and plan to stay here.  I will choose August’s heat instead of snow and cold temperatures any day. Variable weather in the spring and heat in August is just part of living on the Crystal Coast.

 

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Life on the Marsh Edges

Posted on March 12, 2013 by dsobotta
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By the marsh's edge along Raymond's Gut

By the marsh’s edge along Raymond’s Gut

I really enjoy living here on the North Carolina coast.  With all the hiking on the beaches that I do during the non-winter months, some might think that we put down roots here only because of my love for the sandy beaches of the Southern Outer Banks.  There is some truth to that, but to be honest the marshes of eastern North Carolina have my heart.

I love to visit the beaches but having a home in the marshes is like being in the center of the action.  As this Fairfax County, Virginia,  public school website explains “Marshes probably support more life than any other type of habitat.”

To live along the edge of a marsh is a real privilege.  We see a great variety of creatures.  It is easy to find feathered, finned, and furred creatures here along the marshes of Raymond’s Gut most of the year.   We also have our share of shelled critters as well.  All you have to do is scroll through one of my photo collections from the last three months to get an idea of all the activity that happens in the marsh.

With so many aquatic birds around, it is safe to assume that we also have a lot of fish. You can confirm that by visiting my fall 2012 album which shows some of the red drum, trout, and flounder that I had fun catching mostly from my kayak last fall.

While I love getting warm saltwater on my feet over the beach,  an early morning hike along the marsh edge can only be beaten by sliding my kayak in the water and paddling along the marsh grasses.   The view from the water in a kayak is often stunning.  It is not unusual for me to park my kayak in some marsh grass and just enjoy being part of nature.  Sometimes I will just sit in the kayak and watch the sun slide down below the horizon.  Other times I enjoy gliding through the waters of Raymond’s Gut.

The fall of 2012 was truly a great time for kayaking and fishing here in the marsh.  I will remember it for all the puppy drum I caught if for no other reason.  The winter of 2012-13 has also been a really special time in the marsh. Many birds and creatures seek protection from the harsh winds and weather and this year has been no exception. I have enjoyed a Kestrel which has been visiting this winter.  Our many bluebirds have been even bluer than normal.

Spring can be an even better time of the year because we often get to see some new life.  We are already seeing some baby fish and we have high hopes that our pair of river otters might have some babies where they have been staying most of the winter.  We usually have one pair of Canada geese that give us some babies to watch.  Last year I found a nest of pileated woodpeckers.  This is a picture of one of them poking his head out of the nest.

Once summer is here, things get really special in the marsh.  I did this summer morning in the marsh slide show called Mackerel Morning not too long after we moved here.  When the water is nice and warm beyond the marshes, the marsh  just becomes a base for other trips like the one described in the post called Blue Water mornings.

One thing that often surprises people about our marsh is that we seem to have very few mosquitoes.  I cannot explain it, but I know homes in the woods not far from us seem to have more of the biting insects.  I am not going to try to explain why that is the case.  I am just going to enjoy it.

The marsh has turned out to be a great place to write.  The natural beauty helps to sharpen your focus and certainly makes it easier to write about other natural areas.  I just finished my third book, A Taste for the Wild, Canada’s Maritimes.  I know living where I live now helped me remember those beautiful and surprisingly similar places we lived earlier in our lives.

 

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Dreaming of Summer on the Water

Posted on February 17, 2013 by dsobotta
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boguesoundlrwm

Summer in Bogue Inlet

It does not take much of a brush with winter to get me dreaming of the warm waters of Bogue Inlet.  As much as I enjoy going to the beach any time of year, a winter beach scene just cannot match the colors of a summer day on the beach or the waters Bogue Inlet shown in the picture above.

That we have a relatively mild winter is little consolation when you know that the water is just too cold for the kind of boating that we love.  Boating here on the Crystal Coast often involves jumping out of the boat and wading in the warm salt water.  Getting in the water while boating is just part of the fun.  Most of us do not consider we have been boating in the summer unless we get wet.  Sometimes getting wet is the only way to stay cool in the heat of summer.

I love riding down the river and boating through the marshes almost any time, but it is just not the same when I know that I have to keep dry if I want to avoid turning blue.  While we are lucky to have waters that often stay warm well into December, once the waters have picked up a chill, it takes a lot of warmth to get them to the point that you can jump in without a little shock to the system.  Usually the waters warm by late April or early May.  You might not choose to swim in them at that time, but you will not freeze if you happen to get wet.

Some years the waters warm earlier than others, and then there are days when you just cannot wait any longer.  The blue sky and warm air can be so nice that you just have to take advantage of the weather.  My wife is not too keen on me going out into the ocean by myself so I am always happy to have someone who is good with a boat to ride with me or even better take the helm so I can focus on capturing some great pictures.  A good boat partner makes the water at least ten to fifteen degrees warmer.

Here in the middle of February it seems like boating weather is years away but the truth is that in a good year, we often enjoy the water in March and April.   In 2012 March started out warm but cooled by the end of the month.  The cool weather lasted into early April, but by the third week in April it was warm enough to fish and get out in the ocean.  A trip out beyond the beaches is always a treat especially when it happens in April.

It is a rare week that I am not out on the water at least a few minutes in my skiff.  As much fun as that is, it just is not the same as a warm weather trip on water that is approaching swimming temperatures.  While the water temperatures were hovering in the mid to upper fifties in the middle of February, the cool weather that hit us the weekend of February 16-17 will drop them down a lot.  There might even be a light skim of early morning ice on Monday, February 18. (updated: picture of ice from February 18)

I would not be surprised to see the water temperatures get back down to around 50F but I will just have to guess until I get a chance to take the boat out on the river later this week when we get past this cool spell.

I pretty sure I no longer own enough clothes to go for a 30 MPH boat ride when the air temperature is in the thirties. The forecast for the week has us back touching the sixties by the middle of the week so I will wait until then to check the river water temperature.

 

 

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There Are Lots of Egrets, But There Is Only One Frank

Posted on February 9, 2013 by dsobotta
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Frank, The Great Egret

Frank, The Great Egret

We live on White Heron Lane just up the White Oak River from Swansboro, North Carolina.  We are just off Hampton Bay on the river map.

Great egrets used to be called white herons.  It should be no surprise that a home on White Heron Lane has more than a few great egrets in the marshes around it.  We saw them before we moved here in the summer of 2006 and they have become favorite visitors over the years.

Sometime before our waters started cooling in December, I was returning from a kayaking trip on the river and saw a great egret with two reddish spots on his wings. He looked a little shy and was far away.  It was also late in the day. Even with the great zoom on my Nikon P500 beach camera and the even more powerful zoom on my video camera,  I could not tell what the spots were on the egret’s wings.

Only a few days later, I saw the egret in better light and he was a lot closer.  I figured out that he had been tagged.  I posted his picture on Facebook, and Mary, a friend from Beaufort, North Carolina, found someone who had seen our bird in Morehead City.

It turned out that he enjoyed visiting El’s Drive-In.  However, he would refuse any handouts except for fried shrimp.  Someone there gave him the name Frank.  We saw Frank a few more times in December and early January.  Around the end of January, Frank became a regular visitor and took up residence behind our home.  I could see his tags very well.  I even figured out that he had a metal leg band.

My wife and I became very curious about Frank and I sent an email to Jim Craig, a local bird expert who writes a birding column for the Tideland News.  Jim wrote me that Frank was likely tagged by someone either in Ontario or New York.  He mentioned the New York Ornithological Association’s homepage.

As soon as I got Jim’s note I did some searching and eventually sent a note to Susan Elbin of the New York City Audubon.  Susan wrote me back quickly that Frank was likely one of Chip Weseloh’s birds from Canada.  It was not long before Chip confirmed that and gave us a little of Frank’s history.

Chip related that Frank was “banded on 29 June 2012 as a nestling on Nottawasaga Island near Collingwood, Ontario – about an hour and a half drive NW of Toronto on the south shore of Georgian Bay, Lake Huron.”

“It (Frank) has been resighted twice: once on 27 August 2012 at the Pfefferlaw Peat Bog near Sunderland, Ontario, which is north of Oshawa, Ontario, 50 km east of Toronto; and then 3 times in one day (including once by me) at Cranberry Marsh in Whitby, Ontario, about 35 km east of Toronto.”

All of us who have been involved with Frank are pretty excited to start pulling the pieces of his history together.  I have put together a slide show of some recent pictures of Frank.

After much searching I found the video that I took of Frank on his first visit.  It has now been posted on YouTube.  It is not an exciting video unless you enjoy egrets and their very deliberate moves, but I am happy to have found it since it marks Frank’s first visit to our cove on December 20, 2012.

I have posted maps of where I have sighted Frank29x.  These two are from February 8, 2013, and February 5, 2013.  Frank also has a new Facebook page where I will post information.  This is the link for Frank’s page- https://www.facebook.com/Frank29x .

I am sure Frank would appreciate being “liked.”

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