All About The Water

The following post is already five years old as I update it in February 2014. It is one of many that I have written about how important the water is to those of us living in Carteret County. Actually I wrote another article with almost the same title, It’s all about the water, in April of 2011. Only a month or so later, I wrote another one, Water at Our Doorstep. A more recent article written in the fall of 2013 is A Great Big Coastal River. They all talk about my love of the water and how the area’s waters keep me happy. The following article written on January 14, 2009, was typed up before we had any real taste of what winter could be on the Crystal Coast. The picture I have chosen is similar to what was in the original post, but it was taken in the fall of 2013 on the White Oak River. The original but updated post follows.

Great access to water is one of the main reasons that we are living here in western Carteret County near the beaches of Emerald Isle.

As we have gotten deeper into what passes for winter here, I have been thinking about what really makes me happy here and I have been very happy for the last two and one half years.

I have come to the decision that if I had to pick one thing, it is the water and the easy access to it. I have lived in some wonderful places including the shores of Nova Scotia, but I have never lived where water is as much a part of my life as it is in Carteret County.

We travel some, and the longer I am away from the water the stronger the pull seems to be. This past Saturday, the temperatures were once again up in the mid-sixties. Unfortunately I had to work at the office in the afternoon, but the water kept calling me. About 10 AM, I gave in and carried down the basic gear for a run out into the White Oak River.

Since our skiff is just behind the house on a lift, getting the boat ready takes less than ten minutes. I keep the GPS and a few things inside. Basically all I have to do is put the plug in, attach the GPS, and load a few pieces of gear, and then drop the skiff into the water.

Making my way out into the river just takes three or four minutes. It is one of my favorite parts of the journey. I almost always see a heron or two, sometimes a great blue, sometimes a white heron, and occasionally my buddy the green heron. The marshes along our channel are some of their favorite feeding grounds.

In the summer I have been met by bottle nose dolphins as I enter the river.

It is easy to just loose all your troubles once you are in the river. The water stretches so far that it is hard to comprehend the first few times. Saturday I only went a short way down the river due to the lack of time. I did manage to delay going back in by checking some of my fishing holes. The weather was so warm that a long sleeved tee-shirt kept warm on my relatively slow trip on the river.

Had it been ten degrees warmer, I might have skipped work and headed for the Inlet. I can still feel the summer winds and the warm water from all those great times this past summer and fall. Then there was the time we beached the boat on a low water island that almost felt like it was our own island.

I can hardly wait for summer.

If you love being on the water, near the water, or walking the beaches, you will have a hard time finder a better, more friendly place than the waters draining into Bogue Sound.

Here are some pictures I took on my adventure Saturday, January 10, 2009.

There are lots of pictures of the White Oak River, Raymond's Gut and the Emerald Isle area in my new Kindle Book, 100 Pictures, 1000 Words, A Crystal Coast Year, and you will find complete beach information in our recent 2013 Emerald Isle Travel Guide.

If you would like to read more about the Crystal Coast and why we are living here, you will find some helpful posts at this link. More information about life here can be found at my Crystal Coast Life blog. This is the signup link for our monthly newsletter about the Crystal Coast.