Clam Chowder

Friday was a better day for running than Wednesday or Thursday, but it was still overcast, forty degrees, and there was a noticeable north wind blowing.  But I had not run since Tuesday, and I have a regrettable masochistic streak in me when it comes to running, so I headed out the door toward Fort Macon.  A mile from here the road is sheltered a little more from the north wind by sound-side vegetation, and I had dressed accordingly, so I was really not uncomfortable.  I ran all the way back on the beach, though, and I had forgotten how far it was from there to the Bath House area and then back to the condo.  It was a welcome sight after six miles.

As a reward for my effort, we were looking forward to the annual Clam Chowder Cook-off organized by the Friends of the N. C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort. 

The cook-off had been re-scheduled from last Friday due to Winter Storm Jasper, and we began to wonder if it would have to be re-scheduled again due to Kenan; temperatures were dropping and it began raining by mid-afternoon.  We have had a lot of fun at these cook-offs in previous years, but because of Covid the chowder and cornbread – four samples of each – were all take-out this year.  We pulled up outside the Watercraft Center in Beaufort a little early, but they were accommodating and we were able to pick up our boxes early.  We had already been appreciating the wonderful aroma of clam chowder on the way home, but returning to the condo and opening the two boxes they had handed us on such a cold and rainy night was very wonderful!

We sampled them one by one as listed on the ballots provided and dutifully ranked the chowders and the cornbread from first place to last.  Martha and I do not always agree on everything, but as in past years we were in agreement that Chef Dawn Freeman had the best chowder and Dee Dricks the best cornbread.  We marked our ballots and Martha e-mailed them in to be counted.  Not being politicians, we trust that there will be no fraud on the part of the Friends of the NCMM in electing a winner, to be announced on Saturday afternoon.

This morning we awoke to a surprising view outside – the rain had been replaced overnight by blowing snow, not enough to accumulate (as we had been watching it do in Highlands on the Main Street web cam) but definitely visible in this video:

As I am writing this, the tea-kettle wind is shrieking again and the snow has been replaced by sunshine.  The palm trees are shaking wildly in a 27-mph gale, and we have been urged by the Authorities not to remain in port, seek safe harbor, alter course, and/or secure the vessel for severe conditions.  I think we will remain in port today.  I only wish we had some more of Dawn Freeman’s chowder!

A January Beach

A January beach is all about sudden changes.  Ice Storm Jasper (which sounds like a name for a lovable family dog) made for some beautiful photographs, but by Sunday evening the warm sunshine had melted it all away.  Monday and Tuesday were warmer, in the 40s, and the wind had died down, so we were both able to run.  I completed another set of intervals on Monday, a second or two faster than last week on average, and then looking at the weather in the week ahead I completed six miles the very next day.  At my age I need to heed the old adage, “Listen to your body,” especially when I run on successive days, but my body did not complain at all.

It warmed up nicely on Tuesday, and we decided to go to Beaufort and walk around a little.  We have always loved the little town across the harbor and have enjoyed many events there in pre-Covid times.  It has won awards over the years, and this year it was the only South Carolina destination listed in Condé Nast Traveler's 26 Most Beautiful Towns in America.  It’s quiet pace, good restaurants, and architecture dating back to the 1700s were singled out.  On the way, we spied this egret standing immediately next to Fort Macon Road, not far from the condo.  I eased closer and closer and it did not move at all as Martha took its picture from six feet away, nor could we startle it into flight.  A beautiful creature, and a common sight along the road near salt marshes.

I think I always take this same photo in Beaufort, a sign on the side of a building just off Front Street.  It must surely date from another era judging by the swimsuit (and hair style), and the motto, “Nature’s Gift to North Carolina.” 

Martha spent some careful socially-distanced time in one or two shops on Front Street, while I walked down Front Street past the many historic homes there, which have withstood destructive hurricanes and nor’easters over the years.

This home was identified as a short term vacation rental, and had an inviting front porch with rockers and picnic tables – a lovely place to stay, on the waterfront right across from Taylor Creek.  I noticed that the ceiling of the porch was painted blue, which we have learned is intended to deceive hornets into believing it is the sky and so discourage them from building nests there.

The waterfront is always fun to stroll along, with yachts from all across the eastern seaboard docked there.  It is definitely a boating Town, and we have seen small boats tie up in front of a restaurant like the Front Street Grill just as naturally as if it were a street parking place.  We once sat outside, at the same restaurant I think, on a warm February afternoon and watched dolphins leaping out of the water in Taylor’s Creek.

Caution about Covid, as well as frugality, has limited our dining thus far to here in the condo.  We have  been making an exception once a week, though, to order take-out (usually the mahi special) from Amos Mosquito’s Restaurant, which is just a mile or so away on Fort Macon Road, and we also have reservations there for Valentine’s Day – one of only two days during the year when they take reservations.  The name is an interesting one and one which I have explained in this blog in past years.  It seems that the young woman who founded the restaurant, Hallock Cooper Howard, used to have fun with the knock-knock joke:

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Amos.
Amos who?
A mosquito!

As a child, Hallock would always mistell the punchline and say, “Amos Mosquito.”

Martha’s cooking has been wonderful, and so the temptation to dine out is not very great.  This week, for the second time since we have been here, she prepared scallops from Blue Ocean, seared perfectly, and paired with brown rice and oven-roasted tomatoes with basil and blue cheese.  Yum!  And the oceanfront view and the service were exceptional!

It turned cold and windy again on Wednesday and continued that way today, but I bundled up against the 17-mph wind and walked on the beach for a couple of miles.  There is always something interesting to see for the attentive beach-walker.  I spotted this creature just a little way from here, which I first thought was a stingray.  We have seen and touched stingrays swimming in a shallow pool at the excellent North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores not far from here.

A little research told me, however, that this was a skate, which like the stingray is a cartilaginous fish related to the shark.  Skates lay their eggs in little black sacs called mermaid purses, which we have often seen in great quantities washed up on the beach in March and April in Duck on the northern outer banks.

Tomorrow promises to be a warmer day with diminished wind, so we will plan to complete another good run before the next storm (named Kenan), scheduled to arrive Friday night and stay around through Sunday morning, makes us seek shelter from the storm.

Ice Storm at the Beach - Part II

 More photos of the ice storm:

Ice Storm at the Beach

During the night, the shrieking wind died down, and we awoke to clear skies and bright sunshine, although the temperature was only 26 degrees.  If the sun shines long enough, we may be able to get out today.  Neither of us likes to stay indoors as much as we have these past two days, so we hope we can go for a hike or a long walk on the beach this afternoon if not a run.

I made my way gingerly down the still-frozen stairwell for my morning Tai Chi under shelter of the building, and then I walked out to take some photos, which I posted on Facebook.  We've been posting pictures of seafood and warm beaches and sea stars, and this was a dramatic departure from that.  Martha's niece, who has stayed here, wrote, "So strange to see ice there!"  Yes; strange but beautiful.

Winter Storm Jasper

What a remarkable change a day can make, out here on the edge of the ocean where the wind is unimpeded, where weather comes and goes with gale-force, dramatic speed.  Thursday the weather was so mild that I almost felt overdressed in shorts and T-shirt, two easy miles the day after those Bath House Intervals the previous day.  We had been watching the weather carefully, and we knew this would be our last day to stock up on essentials before the next storm, named Jasper, arrived.  So we made a trip to Friendly Market and the grocery store after lunch.  Both places were crowded with shoppers who had the same idea, but we wore masks and tried to distance ourselves from others.

After we returned it was 62 degrees, and we decided to walk on the beach – perhaps our last outdoor exercise for a day or two, we thought.  Could they be right about the impending ice storm?  It was hard to believe that temperatures could plummet 30 degrees overnight.  We found two more sea stars, a Common Sea Star (below) and another small Royal Sea Star.

I had been wondering why some call these creatures starfish and others call them Sea Star.  I read that marine biologists are trying to encourage the latter term because these creatures are not fish at all, they are echinoderms, in the same class as sea urchins and sea cucumbers (which we have only seen in the aquarium).  Since I am proudly on the side of science in these troubling times, I will side with the marine biologists from now on!

The wind shrieks in this condo, more than we ever heard in the place we stayed in previous years, which is more sheltered from the northerly wind.  It sounds, Martha said the other day, like a tea kettle.  You keep wanting to take if off the burner.  When we awoke on Friday, the tea kettle was shrieking away and the palm trees were rattling wildly.  We did not leave the condo all day and were glad we were well-provisioned.  It was a good afternoon for a game of scrabble.

The forecast still sounded intimidating.  Martha had signed up for the Clam Chowder Cook-off, organized by the N. C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort, an event that we have attended in past years but this year was going to be curbside-pickup only due to Covid.  But forecasters were still advising that there would be power outages due to ice on power lines and falling trees, and urging people not to travel at all.  There are three high bridges between Atlantic Beach and Beaufort, all of them likely to be treacherous. We learned that the Cook-off had been postponed until next Friday, and we also learned that many businesses were closing early.  The rain was blowing and there was a little sleet and snow mixed with it.

I realized again how vulnerable we are here in the event of a power outage.  In Highlands, I keep fresh gasoline down by the basement and can drag out our small generator in weather like this, enough to power the furnace and even our router and computers so we can check the news.  Here there is no generator or backup heat source.  So we turned up the heat before going to bed and I put masking tape on the cracks around that shrieking front door, expecting to wake up in the dark.

But fortunately we still had power this morning, and I opened the curtains on a sight I have never seen before out here – ice frozen in the palm trees and dune vegetation.

I wanted to do my Tai Chi in the open, covered area under the building, out of the gale-force north wind, but ended up doing it in the hallway outside, in front of the elevators (which I did not want to risk getting stuck inside).  The stairwell was a solid sheet of ice.

Ice dangled from the railings everywhere, and the parking lot out front was shining brightly with perhaps a half-inch of ice.

So here we are, the power still on (for now), but the tea kettle still shrieking.  It has warmed up to 30 degrees, 17 mph north wind, and ice everywhere.  The Saturday morning long run has been cancelled.

Time to get the Scrabble Board out again after lunch!

P. S.  Martha learned that the tires washed up on the beach (see last post) came from artificial fish habitat reefs, disturbed by the storm.

The Unexpected

Monday morning, the storm clouds had been mostly swept away, but the wind continued to blow all day, and on Tuesday it was still blowing a 30-mile-per-hour gale straight out of the west.  I took this time-lapse video from our balcony showing how swiftly the few clouds in the sky were moving.

 
I am seeing some progress in my running and I did not want to miss a day, so I bundled up in tights and vest and headed straight into the wind.  I felt like a small craft myself as I steered a westerly course, away from Fort Macon, and down a long residential street behind oceanfront homes that provide partial shelter.  After only a mile, I turned and retraced my route, the wind now at my back.

Yesterday, the wind had finally subsided enough that we could take a walk on the beach to the Oceanana Pier and back.  The ocean was calm and the tide was out, and on the way Martha spotted this speckled crab just washed in, but much larger than usual, perhaps ten inches wide.  Martha thought she saw its mouth move, and I tried to push it back into the surf, but it did not revive.  I was glad I didn’t try to pick it up because I learned later, “This crab has a very aggressive temperament (similar to the Blue crab) and vicious pincers.”

We had turned at the pier and were almost back to the condo when Martha spotted this starfish.  We gently turned it over and found that it was a Royal Starfish (Astropecten articulatus) – I love that Latin name.  They are rather rare – we have only collected them once or twice, and I wrote about it last year.

It is the unexpected that I like the most,
Like the Royal Starfish we found,
Phoenician purple, like a Christmas cookie
Squeezed from a piping bag . . .

Yes, it is the unexpected that I like the most, and that we invariably find on our walks along the beach.  Unexpected but much less picturesque were a half-dozen tires washed up.  We had noticed them when we were here a year or two ago and wondered about them.  Surely someone had not hauled them out on the ocean and dumped them?  My best theory is that they were dislodged by the fierce storm from the fishing docks where they are lined up to cushion approaching boats when they tie up.

The beach changes from day to day, and there is always something new to notice.  It is the same with the sunrise and sunset, never the same, always glorious.  Every day is a day like no other.  This morning the wind died down almost completely and temperatures were predicted to rise into the 50s by noon.  It was already 39 when I awoke a few minutes before sunset, and not wanting to miss it I hurried out to the dunetop deck for my morning Tai Chi.  I had not gone far when I realized it was covered in ice; like a highway bridge, the elevated walkway can freeze before other surfaces and remain that way long after the air temperature warms up.

I made my way gingerly out to the deck, took a picture, and then came back to do my Tai Chi under the building.  I noticed that the lawn was white with frost except where the sun had already shone.

The moon, full on Monday, was still in the western sky, high over the roofs of the neighboring houses.

Temperatures warmed up as predicted, and we were both able to complete a good run – five miles for Martha and four for me.  I did more “Bath House Intervals” this morning, a week after those two I completed last week (see post of January 12).  I was hoping to do better than 1:09 and 1:08, and I was happy to exceed my expectations:  a perfect set of negative splits in 1:10, 1:07, 1:05, and 1:03.  Those last two were about the same time as the ones I completed last year.

When I returned to the condo, I went out onto the walkway again and sat for awhile, enjoying the bright, warm sun.  What a change in only three hours time!  On the horizon I could see a ship coming into Beaufort Inlet, not the usual freighter but what looked like a military vessel, although not the Coast Guard cutter.  I heard footsteps behind me and a man walking a cute little dog was coming out to stretch his legs, and we spoke to each other.  With Covid still raging, we have not been socializing at all other than with folks at Blue Ocean, Friendly Market, and the Carteret County Library (which I visited last week), so it was nice to have a conversation with someone, albeit a socially-distanced outdoor one.  “Looks like a New York Class, with a 50 hull,” he said as we were watching the ship.  “You sound like a mariner!” I said.

(That's not my photo, by the way - I was too slow to retrieve my phone and take its photo because it was moving so fast into the Inlet.)

During the course of our conversation, I learned that he was retired Navy who had served in Vietnam, and that the ship we were watching had steel in its hull from the Twin Towers.  He had done a lot of other interesting things during and after his career, knew Highlands well, and had been born in Old Fort.  “Old Fort,” I said.  “I know it well.  My daughter went to Presbyterian Summer Camp there at Camp Grier.”  He looked surprised.  “I was a Counselor there,” he said.  “No way!” I said.  “Did you know Bart Shaw?”  I don’t know how I pulled the name of the Camp Director out of my memory.  “Oh yes,” he said, and we talked about amiable, chubby, white-bearded Bart.

He asked me how long I was going to be here, and I told him mid-March.  “We like to avoid the winter weather in Highlands,” I said.  “Except it looks like it is following us here!”  He had learned as I had about the storm that was on its way – any good mariner keeps abreast of the weather reports! – a second winter storm coming not only to Highlands (where there are still snowy roads) but to Atlantic Beach as well.

The Winter Storm Watch is in effect from Thursday night until Saturday morning:  Heavy freezing rain and sleet possible.  Total sleet accumulations of up to one inch and ice accumulations of up to a quarter inch possible.   Power outages and tree damage are likely due to the ice.  Travel could be nearly impossible. 

Our neighbor sent us a picture of our house yesterday afternoon, and Martha used a program she has on her phone to turn it into a watercolor.  It looks like that snow will be around for awhile, and more on the way. 

So we don’t know quite what to expect.  This is the seventh winter we have spent out here, and we have only experienced a dusting of snow, icy walkways from time to time, and howling gale-force winds.  We can only hope that a power grid accustomed to taking on hurricanes can withstand ice.

Winter Storm Izzy

I’m not sure when they began naming these winter storms as they do hurricanes, but I like the name Izzy for this latest one.  It’s better than naming one “Mike” or “Harry.”  I’m old-school enough to think that storms should all be given female names.  We both completed a chilly, windy long run yesterday (seven miles for me, the longest all year!), and Izzy was already making her presence felt as the wind increased and the clouds moved in.

They began posting Gale Warnings yesterday.  I would not want to be a small craft out on the road running this morning, let along out there on the raging ocean!

 

Last night they began posting Coastal Flood Warnings, and they sounded equally frightening.  In conditions like this, I am glad that our condo is a long, long way from the ocean and on the second floor.   

 

They take these very detailed warnings seriously out here.  Veteran mariners know what six- to twelve-foot seas can do to a small fishing boat. 

Looking ahead, we made a trip to the grocery store and to Friendly Market yesterday afternoon and don’t have to go out at all today.  Our condo is exposed to the northerly wind, and all night we could hear the wind whistle and howl through the door.  Now we are settled in on a Sunday morning watching the wind furiously shake the palm trees out near the swimming pool as if they were dust mops. 

 I checked the Highlands Webcam on Main Street first thing this morning and watched a time-lapse image of a Town snow plow making its way down a deserted Main Street covered in about seven inches of snow. 

We had checked in with Main Street yesterday and noticed that it was absolutely filled with vehicles.  Visitors like to flock to Highlands before a big snow, a real treat for Floridians and Atlanteans.  But they also make it difficult for crews trying to clear roads and restore power.  Many of them have huge SUV vehicles and think that because they have four-wheel-drive they are invulnerable.  In my experience, those are the ones more likely to slide off the road, and the first to call 911 when the power goes out.  Stay home, people!

We learned from Martha’s aunt Anne that Clemson received three inches, and our daughter Katy reported the same from Greenville.  That’s unusual for the Upstate area.  Anne could not remember that much snow since six years ago.  We were visiting her at the time – on the way to Atlantic Beach for the first time, actually – and I took this photo of her patio.

Now the rest of the day stretches languidly before us, a lazy Sunday watching the blowing rain as the wind slowly moves around from the northwest to the southwest, playing music, reading, perhaps even playing Scrabble while the wind howls outside.  

Stay safe, everyone!