Duck and Wine

We are on "Shore Leave" for a week, so I haven't been updating this blog every day.  Our original plan was to conclude our April trip with a week here in Duck, but Tuesday we had a serendipitous phone call from Twiddy, our rental company, informing us that there had been a last-minute cancellation and asking if we wanted to stay another week at a discounted rate.  We checked our calendars, made a couple of schedule adjustments, and decided it was too good an offer to refuse.  So we are here for an additional week, and we have been rewarded for our decision by good weather, sunny and warm, and some good running.

On Wednesday and Friday, I logged five-miles each day, feeling stronger and stronger each day.  I have read that elite marathon runners sometimes take a month or two off every year, just to let their bodies settle down and recover completely after hard running.  So I don't think that two weeks without running for this old guy had any deleterious effect (and if I had any sense at all I would do the same thing every Spring).

This morning I did not run the usual Saturday morning long run; instead, we attended the "Duck and Wine Festival," which we have enjoyed several times over the years.  Its success has become so great that this year we had to stay up until midnight (an effort for us!) to grab our tickets off the internet (they were gone by the next morning).  It is a great opportunity for local restaurants to demonstrate their culinary skills every April; each chef is provided a large quantity of duck, and they are charged with the responsibility of incorporating it into a dish.  In the past we have enjoyed such unusual fare as scallops wrapped in duck bacon (I didn't even know you could make bacon from a duck!) and duck tacos.  This year was equally extraordinary.

Spread out along the Waterfront Shops, walking distance away from where we are staying, we sampled duck sushi, duck Brunswick stew, and duck ham, on a cloudless day with hundreds of other duck-revelers.  It was one of the best D&W festivals we have ever attended.

We sat for a long time, sated with unusual duck appetizers, listening to "The Alley Cats.," a really good local band.  The lead guitarist (left) was exceptional, and the guitarist on the right has a day job at the Pine Knoll Shores fitness center where I work out when I am visiting here.  Alley is the drummer and she has a pretty good voice as well.

The music was so good that this non-dancing roadrunner was motivated to ask his wife for a dance, and so we danced to the rhythms of the Alley Cats on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, on Currituck Sound, enjoying good food.

That's me.  The clumsy one in the green shirt.  What got me to my feet, if I remember correctly, was a stirring rendition of "Mustang Sally."

Walking on the Boardwalk

It was rainy yesterday afternoon, off and on, which is not necessarily a bad thing at the beach.  I had already run and it was wonderful to watch the rain fall from inside the screened porch, cozy in our little house, listening to the ocean in the background.

Rainy day at the beach and nothing to do,

Il dolce far niente.  Rain streaks the porch screen,

Leaving little strands of dangling pearls.

This morning it cleared up and we decided to walk the entire length of the boardwalk.  It was a slower pace than my run yesterday, a good day to sit on benches in the sunlight, to appreciate the beauty of Currituck Sound.

Signs all along the way urge cyclists to walk their bicycles, and runners to share the Boardwalk with other pedestrians.

We decided to have lunch at Wave Pizza Cafe, which is located directly on the Boardwalk.  You can sit at a picnic table here overlooking the sound, watching people walk by, and enjoying the Surfer Girl (or another) pizza.  What a great, relaxing afternoon!  And their sign on the wall, which I have photographed every year we have been here, has more meaning today.

"Bar Harbor, 901 miles."  It is hard to believe that we were there exactly one week ago today! 

I had never looked closely at the two engraved photographs in the Town Hall, one at the entrance to the men's room and one at the women's room.  These are local people who inhabited this isolated place years ago, before the Town of Duck was incorporated, and they look like they could have weathered the tough Atlantic winters here with no difficulty.  Here is Molly Hines:

And here is Andrew Scarborough, presumably the man who gave his name (or property) to Scarborough Faire, in the heart of Duck.

I am glad that the Town of Duck is as interested in preserving its history as it is its environment.

Shore Leave

I realized on this Monday morning that I had not run for nearly two weeks - since that run at Niagara Falls - an exceptionally long time for me.  So it was with great joy that I got out the door and started down Marlin Drive on a five-mile run.  It was a little overcast but the temperature was perfect.

The ocean here seems to be a a lot more energetic than that at Atlantic Beach, where we stayed earlier this year, and I realized that was because we are facing due east, not south, and there is nothing between us and Europe.  The sun rises directly in front of our house, and the wind and the waves arrive unimpeded from the vast Atlantic Ocean in front of us.  We are are at the same latitude as Lisbon, Portugal (or a little south of there), straight out across the ocean.  "Bem vinda," Oh great Atlantic!

The Town of Duck is a perfect place to run, similar to Atlantic Beach, NC, but more interesting because in only half a mile you are in the heart of Duck on the pedestrian path along the highway.  I passed by all of our familiar places over 18 years of vacationing here:  that laid-back old shopping center Scarborough Faire, sprawling under the live oak trees; Fishbone, where we would always sample a cup of its award-winning Conch Chowder our first night here; and that semi-secret place we discovered years ago, a sidewalk at the far end of the Four Seasons development that goes nearly a mile out to the ocean.  The air was fragrant with honeysuckle, and I stopped to pick some rosemary, which grows in huge bushes out here (and will adorn dinner tonight).

The other great running opportunity here is the Duck Boardwalk, which extends nearly a mile along the Currituck Sound and can be accessed from the Town Park (centrally located - restrooms, water fountain) and other locations throughout the Town’s Village Commercial District.  I got on at the southern-most end, near Aqua Restaurant, and followed it all the way to the other end, the Waterfront Shops not far from Marlin Drive.

Mid-way, not far from the Town Park, is the Clinton Memorial Chapel, back behind the Methodist Church.  Martha's Aunt Lizette told us about it years ago, before the Boardwalk had been extended (it is now directly adjacent to the chapel). 

A morning run along the boardwalk - or, indeed, a visit to Duck at all - would not be complete without a stop at this quiet sanctuary to give thanks for life, for good health, for friends and family, and for the gift of running.

Virginia Beach to Duck

This was the last leg of our road trip - or, perhaps, the second-to-last - arriving in Duck, a place where we have stayed for 18 years in April and which we dearly love.  It is not a long drive at all from Virginia Beach to the Outer Banks.  We stopped briefly to see the famous Virginia Beach Boardwalk, nearly deserted on this Sunday morning.

Then we drove farther south, past those small, sandy little farms typical of Eastern North Carolina, and eventually we found ourselves on familiar ground, driving on Route 158 - the Caratoke Highway - which we have traveled many times on previous trips to the OBX.  Our first stop was The Cotton Gin.  I don't think we have ever driven this road and not stopped at this place, described on its Facebook page as "a true Outer Banks shopping experience!  Room after Room of unique gifts, apparel, gourmet, bath and body and home furnishings!"  Very true, despite the exclamations.

 
Across the highway is a small produce stand, where we stopped for fresh asparagus and strawberries (also a tradition).  And then we stopped at the Weeping Radish Farm Brewery back down the highway a little bit.

I once told my Mom (who dearly loved Reuben sandwiches) that I knew where you could get the best Reuben sandwiches in the world; unfortunately, it was 500 miles away, in Jarvisburg, NC.  The Weeping Radish was also recently recognized as the oldest microbrewery in North Carolina.  Owner Uli Bennewitz came here in the early-1980s and decided to open a microbrewery similar to the ones he had left behind in Bavaria. "The only problem was that it was illegal in North Carolina for a brewery to sell beer directly to the consumer," its website says.  "Working with State politicians Uli changed the law in North Carolina allowing microbreweries to sell their beer on site. A movement was created.  North Carolina is now one of the leading microbrewery States with over 120 open and many more under construction."  They also have very good Reuben sandwiches.  

And they have received another honor as well:  they have been discovered by Guy Fieri, of Cooking Channel fame, who pronounced the food (and drink) an especially good "Diner, Drive-in, and Dive."  I'm not sure which of these three categories he placed the Weeping Radish in, but I am glad he found it and put it on the map.

We kept driving south and eventually crossed the Wright Memorial Bridge, which marks the beginning of the Outer Banks.  I always seem to relax several degrees when I cross this bridge.  We have so many powerful memories of this particular area of the Outer Banks; we drove past the starting line of the OBX marathon across from the school (which we have both completed), past the place where we once went kayaking in the Kitty Hawk Woods, and onward through Southern Shores, and then up two-lane Highway 12 to Duck.

The people at Twiddy, our rental company, cannot be nicer; we have rented houses from them for several years now.  "We've driven 3500 miles to get here," we told the woman at the check-in desk.  "Where did you come from?' she asked incredulously.  "Oh, Western North Carolina.  We just took a long way around to get here."  We told her where we had driven.  "Well," she smiled.  "It sounds like you're ready to drop anchor for awhile."

 And we were.  Time for a little shore leave at the end of a long and exciting April Road Trip.

New Castle to Virginia Beach

Somewhere yesterday or today (its location is a little imprecise in Delaware), we crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, and found ourselves in a different country.  I am not sure what it was - the little garages and country churches along the road, the big open fields, the falling-down barns - but it suddenly just felt like we were in The South again.  The part of the country where complete strangers in convenience stores say, "Y'all come back now!" as you walk out the door. 

The Bayshore Byway rambles through marshland and farming country, and is a beautiful drive on those lightly-trafficked two-lane roads we had missed.

Trees were flowering again as we drove farther south; we stopped to take a photo of this driveway leading to a farmhouse far from the road.

We drove through small towns whose names I did not record, and had a simple lunch at a little Mexican restaurant.  This house was on the main street.  How marvelous it would be to live in a house like this, in a town where the only place to eat on a Saturday morning (as far as we could tell) was a Mexican restaurant, where very little English seemed to be spoken back in the kitchen.

Fishermen had gathered all along the shore of the Delaware River on this Saturday morning, unloading their boats from trailers, and far across the river in the distant haze we could see the big towers of the Hope Creek Nuclear Power Plant.

We had read about the John Dickinson Plantation, and the stop there was worthwhile.  The grounds were beautiful, green grass and dogwoods flowering.

John Dickinson is known at "The Penman of the Revolution," and this young docent took us through the main house; she was both knowledgeable and passionate about a man who had been instrumental in the Revolution.

Dickinson has written "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania," which had been one of the writings that had inspired people living in rural America in the 18th century to take the brash step of declaring itself independent from Britain.

We traveled farther south down the Chesapeake and finally reached the beginning of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel, a 20-mile route across Chesapeake Bay, once designated one of the Seven Engineering Wonders of the Modern World.  I learned that the CBBT consists of  12 miles of low-level trestle, two one-mile-long tunnels (that seemed way too narrow to us), two bridges, two miles of causeway, four man-made islands, and 5-1/2 miles of approach roads.  We stopped at one of the man-made islands, halfway-across, and took this photo of a huge oceangoing ship that had just passed over us in the tunnel.

It was beginning to drizzle when we arrived in Virginia Beach, just on the other side of the CBBT.  We made our way through a maze of streets, using our Google Maps app, to a little restaurant named Blue, located in a strip shopping center and improbably rated No. 1 on TripAdvisor.  It was absolutely packed on this Saturday night, crowded and noisy.  Our server brought us out a tiny little crab's claw, an amuse bouche, while we were waiting.  And then the main course arrived, perfectly presented and delicious.  Flat-screen TVs hung on the walls, playing videos of fish swimming in the deep blue ocean.  It was an unexpected highlight of the restaurants we had discovered on our road trip.

But as soon as we left the restaurant, back-navigating using our iPhone app, it began to rain, and then it began to pour rain, to the point where visibility in the decreasing daylight was a problem.  We felt like a storm-tossed vessel, making its way to harbor out on a rough sea.  Lightning flashed nearby.

"Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea . . ." - Tennyson

We were so relieved when we finally arrived back at our motel, and I could securely back our little boat into its safe berth, ready for tomorrow's leg of the journey. 

Mystic Seaport to New Castle

This was a day that I had been dreading since we had planned this trip:  that stressful drive through New York City, on the way back home.  There is simply no other way to get from New England to North Carolina than going through this city (unless you steer a wide berth around it as we did in the first week of our road trip).  But as it turned out, it was not much more stressful than Toronto.

But first, we made a detour to North Haven, the town where my family lived until 1967, the year I graduated from high school. The town square was still there, picturesque as in many Connecticut towns; I almost did not recognize it at first, but then I pointed out to Martha the Episcopal Church up on the hill, and the big cannon that we used to climb on.  Still the same, since 1786.

Still, you can never go home again (see post of April 8), and it was ironic that I should be visiting this place after 50 years, as we had visited Barnardsville earlier in the same road trip.  I found the house I had lived in, after a little driving up and down the street.

But it had been gray, and had no awnings, and looked so much larger back then.  Here is a snowy photo I found in my archives, taken by my Dad ca, 1963 on his old 35mm camera.

Then we drove down to the end of the road where North Haven High School had been, half-a-block away, and found . . . an empty field.  Where had my beloved school gone?  I remember snow drifts up to the roof of this one-story brick building, and a big gymnasium and auditorium (I was in a class of 300 students when I graduated).  We stopped for gas and I asked somebody who seemed to be local.  "This may seem like a strange question, but I grew up here and left 50 years ago, and lived on Anthony Road right around the corner.  What happened to the High School?"  He was friendly enough.  "Oh, they tore that down four or five years ago, and built a big new school.  Had a class reunion for the whole school!"  Oh well.  Farewell to Miss Lee, my favorite history teacher ever.  And Miss Satterlee, who taught me French so well that I sailed through my language requirement when I was a freshman in college.  Farewell to the past, to all that.  There was nobody left on my old street, or in my old town, that I knew anymore.

Then the harrowing drive began, south and west toward "The Big Apple."  But my Google Maps app routed us down the Wilbur Cross Parkway and the Merritt Parkway, which were less stressful than I-95, almost like a four-lane Blue Ridge Parkway in places, with its stone bridges and wooden guardrails.  Then the pace quickened, and the next few miles were a bit of a blur as my faithful navigator, iPhone in hand, guided me through the Bronx and onto the lower level of the George Washington Bridge (bridges in North Carolina only have one level!) and finally onto the New Jersey Turnpike in all its odorous industrial glory.  Simon and Garfunkel was gong through my head:

Counting the cars
On the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come
To look for America,

And in no time it seemed that the rest areas were more civilized, the drivers more courteous, the roadsides greener.  We made our way to New Castle, Delaware, and its historic district not far from our comfortable little motel.  Here the brick buildings reminded us of the South, of Richmond or Williamsburg.  It felt good to stretch our legs and walk on these quiet old streets.

They seemed like a million miles away from the Jersey Turnpike.  We found a little place called Penn's Place and sat in the sun in a flowery little courtyard, chatting with locals.  Two women behind us, however, were conversing in fluent French.  And then we decided to investigate the depths of Jessop's Tavern, located in the lower level of a ca. 1724 Colonial building.

I seemed as if we had stepped back in time from the hustle and bustle of the great metropolis through which we had just driven with so much anxiety.  It was as dark inside as if we had entered a page in a history book.

New Castle, Delaware.  This was a place I could enjoy visiting for a while, with its quiet brick streets and its big green waterfront park, miles away from New Jersey, hazy across a wide river.

Kennebunkport to Mystic Seaport

A mockingbird was singing extravagantly outside the Yachtsman very early in the morning; the storm had passed, and the bay was calm and still - what a difference from last night!

Breakfast was a casual affair, with only one other person present, a man a little younger than I am who said that he had been coming here for years.  He seemed to be in the know.  "You can't go wrong with Mabel's," he said when we told him where we had eaten last night.  Then he told us about a restaurant we had not heard of (and for good reason) in Camden, the best Thai restaurant he had ever dined in, but completely under the radar; he said there was no sign or advertising, just a typewritten piece of paper tacked to the front door each day for the menu.  We would have loved discovering that kind of place!

We drove through Kennebunkport and passed some incredible homes.  This was "The Wedding Cake House."

And this mansion was unnamed, but I made a u-turn to take a photo.  It is inconceivable that these houses are lived in instead of being museums.

It seemed like no time before we crossed over into Rhode Island (such a diminutive state! - and where highway work-zone signs say "Rhode Work Ahead"), and then into Connecticut, the state I was born in.  These New England states are so small compared to North Carolina, where the distance from Murphy to Manteo is 545 miles; the distance we were driving today, through three states, was only 182 miles.

I never visited Mystic Seaport as a boy growing up in Connecticut; I suppose my frugal Dad thought it was too far for a Sunday afternoon drive (62 miles from my home in North Haven, even closer to East Haven where we lived before that).  Martha and I routinely drive 250 to 300 miles per day on trips like this, and 60 miles on a Saturday morning grocery-shopping trip.

The historic drawbridge in Mystic Seaport is something of a marvel; it was built in 1920 and is still in operation, dividing the town in half on historic Route 1.

Mystic is a lovely little seaport, its streets lined with shops and restaurants.  I strolled along the river and spotted this rowing crew out on the Mystic River taking instructions from a stern-looking women in a nearby speedboat, bullhorn in hand.  It had warmed up considerably; it would have been a nice day to go rowing.

On the top of the hill was Mystic Pizza, made famous from the Julia Roberts movie of the same name, which I have to confess I have never seen; I have put it in my Netflix Queue, however, now that I have seen where the movie was (in part) filmed.

I took a break form walking and had a blueberry scone and a cup of coffee, sitting outside Sift Bake Shop, enjoying the sunshine.  Up the street was this statue of the great John J. Kelley and his dog; Kelley was an Olympic Marathon, National Marathon, and Boston Marathon champion who hailed from nearby North Stonington.  The Boston Marathon had been held four days ago, and somebody had slipped his or her singlet on the statue.

We had dinner overlooking the Mystic River at S & P Oyster Company, where we again had small plates, including my first-ever taste of squid-ink risotto.

It was strange to be back in Connecticut again after 50 years.  My Dad would have limited our visit to Mystic, in those days, to "window shopping," and squid-ink risotto was something from another world (and would have been for anybody back in those days); did we even know what risotto was when I was growing up?  Or that squid ink was something a person might want to actually eat?

Rockland to Kennebunkport

We were still looking at interesting lighthouses when we left Rockland, so our next stop was a visit to the Pemaquid Point light, as pretty as a picture puzzle.

These rocky places can be dangerous, according to this stern warning.  The wind was picking up, the waves way down below were becoming rough.  I stepped back a little more from the edge.

I spotted this interesting building on the way back from Pemaquid Point - the "Willing Workers Hall," which is now rented out as a meeting hall but has an interesting history that, as far as I can tell, involved freed slaves ("willing" workers) who settled in this part of the country.  

Our morning ramble continued from one pretty little town to another - Bristol, Wiscasset, Brunswick, and finally Freeport, home of the L.L. Bean Flagship Store and a major tourist attraction.  It is obligatory on the part of visitors to have a photo taken by the big boot, so we did.

Then we had lunch, bundling up in the increasingly cold and windy conditions (good weather for selling winter clothing!), across the street at Linda Bean's Maine Kitchen and Topside Tavern.  I did not learn until later that Ms. Bean, heiress to the L. L. Bean fortune, made a controversial donation to the Trump campaign and was herself an unsuccessful Congressional candidate.  "Extreme Caution Is Required During Stormy Conditions," I remembered.

After lunch, I had some coffee while Martha wandered through the giant L. L. Bean complex.  I spent some time marveling at this amazing exhibit on display - the famous "Locked Moose of New Sweden, Maine."

In 2006, a woman found the remains of these moose on her property, antlers locked together in battle in a fatal embrace.  "The antlers have never ever been separated since they first became locked in the Fall of 2005," the accompanying plaque explained.  I wanted to find some political significance in this taxonomic display but it was becoming too cold and windy to spend much time thinking about it all, and we had decided not to take Trump or a deadlocked Congress with us on vacation.

We stopped to see the big, bustling city of Portland and its historic Old Port area, with its cobbled streets.  And then we headed on toward Kennebunkport, home of a Republican President I actually respected, George H. W. Bush, our 41st president and a decent and intelligent man whom I once saw in person when he was campaigning for President.  The Bush Complex was on a rocky peninsula out in the harbor.  By that time waves were smashing onto the shore, and the wind was so strong you could barely open the door of the car.

We were nearing the end of our day, and of our time in Maine, so we decided to have lobster at a Kennebunkport tradition, Mabel's Lobster Claw, ca. 1952, an old-school lobster place famous also for clam chowder and blueberry pie.  (We had all three, as I remember it!)  Mabel's was voted America's Second Best seafood restaurant by USA Today readers - quite an honor.  I learned from our menu several things I had not known about lobsters:

• Lobsters can live to be 100 years old or older.
• During colonial days, lobsters were plentiful and were the food for the poor.
• A lobster's brain is in its throat, and it tastes with its feet.
• Lobsters are heart-healthy, a great source of Omega-3 fatty acids.
• They have on average only 96 calories and only 2 grams of fat.
• Lobsters can grow up to four feet long and weigh 100 pounds.
• Lobsters are green or yellow or bright blue; they turn red when cooked.

It was a good night to enjoy the comforts of chowder.

We allowed the little plastic bibs to be tied around our necks, were given the claw-cracking utensils, and submitted to a photograph.

And yes, if my sister is reading this, that side dish in the foreground is actually turnips, prepared the way my Mom used to prepare them (mashed) for every Thanksgiving Dinner we ever had growing up in New England.

Our Inn was the Yachtsman, a truly unique place right on the harbor, which we could not properly enjoy in the increasing wind and rain.  Martha booked all of our reservations for this trip, and I don't know how she found gems like this one!