The Boardwalk

We slept with the bedroom screened-door open last night so that we could hear the ocean all night, and it was cool enough that I closed it early this morning.  A cold front had come through overnight (temperatures in the 50s - cold is relative in April at the Outer Banks!) and it was blustery this morning out on the dune-top deck.  But the sun soon broke through and it quickly turned into a beautiful, sunny day, with just a little sharpness in the air. This is the morning in our training schedule when we planned to complete one last, easy three-mile run before the half marathon on Sunday. 
 
We both started out separately, but we ended up running the same route, although in opposite directions, so that we never saw each other.  I ran to one end of the Town Boardwalk in the Waterfront Shops and all the way to its end at Aqua Restaurant, then back along Highway 12.  It was so nice to see all of our usual landmarks, and we both felt strong and loose, not as sluggish as on Monday morning after two days of driving.

One of the landmarks along the Boardwalk was Wave Pizza, which we discovered was scheduled to open today for the season.  We both had the same idea, and after returning that's where we went for lunch, ordering the Surfer Girl pizza, and enjoying the ambiance of the boardwalk and the warm sunshine."First pizza of 2019!" I told our server.

And then we walked along the same route on which we had run earlier.  The Town of Duck is to be commended for this 0.78-mile boardwalk connecting one end of Town with another, along the sound and its maritime forest, and also connecting restaurants and shopping centers. 

The pollen is heavy this year, and at one place in the quiet eddies of the sound you could see it floating on top of the water, a thick greenish-yellow film on the water.

Every year, we stop to visit the Clinton chapel at the United Methodist Church, a place we first learned about from Martha's Aunt Lizette, who visited here years ago.  It is a little oasis of spiritual calm back here on Currituck Sound.  The Bible invariably lies open at one of the Psalms.

I was grateful that someone had tacked up a little sign, saying "Duck," on the live oak tree that spreads its long limbs across the boardwalk just north of Clinton Chapel.

"Is this your Town?" a woman asked me.  Her husband had a beard much longer than mine and carried a big camera on a tripod over his shoulder, taking photos of the sound and of the maritime forest.  "No, but I am a frequent visitor," I replied.  "We've been coming here for 20 years."

Out in the sound, they have built platforms for ospreys to nest, and I watched a pair who seemed to be watching carefully over their newborn young.

It was a beautiful day!  I walked all the way down to the Waterfront Shops, where the day had begun for me, and found a good cup of coffee at Duck's Cottage Coffee and Books. 

And then I sat on a bench overlooking the sound, and simply watched the ducks, the little boats going to and fro, and the gentle ripples on the water.