There is Always Something to See

There is always something to see on the beach.  This year, we have not yet discovered as many interesting shells as last year, or especially 2021 when the $18 million "Morehead City Harbor Dredging & Concurrent Beach Nourishment" project was underway.  Silt was dredged from the Morehead City Harbor, a State Port and the deepest one on the East Coast, and deposited on this beach, along with many, many interesting shells.  So far we have found only a couple of tiny whelks, the smallest I have ever seen I think, and some olive shells.  And yesterday I found this blue crab washed up by the tide, so whole and intact that I thought it might still be alive, and not yet discovered by the ever-watchful sea gulls.

It is almost exactly one mile each way from the condo to the Oceanana Pier just west of here, closed this time of year but elbow-to-elbow with fishermen during the season.  The first quarter-mile of that is from the building out the walkway and across the very wide, flat beach, which this time of year is usually deserted but which we usually find temperate enough, although we sometimes have to don windbreakers and gloves.

I think I always take this photo of the waves breaking under the pier, so this time I decided to post a video instead.

Saturday was a perfect day for running, and I had planned ambitiously to increase my mileage from three to six miles, always a bit of a risk at my age since I have not been completing any “long” runs for some time.  I say “long” because six miles several years ago would have been a short run, and my weekly mileage this week (twelve miles) would have been an ordinary long run.  Still, as I have said previously, I am the runner I am right now, and six miles is where I am right now. 

I did some laps in the parking lot of the Picnic Area, and then ran on the bike path all the way to the Fort.  It is a good, safe route, although sometimes cars go a little faster than they should on East Fort Macon Road.

Along the way are the familiar signs that we are now accustomed to seeing, marking our progress to the Fort.  First there is the “Union Artillery Placement” sign, marking the place where on April 25, 1862, Union General John G. Parke’s forces bombarded the Fort with heavy siege guns for eleven hours, aided by the fire of four Union gunboats out in Beaufort Harbor.  The Fort defended itself against the gunboats, but the Union guns hit it 560 times and it was forced to surrender.  The placement is on a little knoll, not even high enough to be called a hill, but a good vantage point to set up guns only a half-mile from the Fort.  

The next sign, just before reaching the gate to the Fort and opposite the Coast Guard Station, is a sign marking the location of Blackbeard the Pirate’s ship the Queen Anne’s Revenge, sunk in 1718 about a mile out to sea.  The wreck was found relatively recently, in 1996, and there is an interesting exhibit at the Maritime Museum in Beaufort which includes relics from the notorious pirate's ship.

It is sobering to run in this place where wars were fought, where men on both sides in the Civil War were killed, and where pirates were fended off.  Rounding the final curve, along a white fence, cannons on the ramparts above point out over the harbor, still fired from time to time (although without any cannonballs) on special occasions.

At the end of the Fort’s parking lot is a huge pile of Christmas Trees, which are collected here to eventually be distributed out along the nature trails on the beach side of the Park in order to stabilize the sand dunes.  Just as I always do, I stopped in front of the big pile of trees and simply stood there for a minute, inhaling the fragrance. 

 
The three-mile return trip to the condo was not completed without some walking breaks, but it felt good to have increased my mileage, which for me is the best way to get back in racing condition.  We have identified a 5-K race on February 4, one month from now, and it is good to have a goal at the end of gradually-increasing mileage and some speed sessions.  We have run the race, the Cocoa 5-K (held in conjunction with the Carolina Chocolate Festival) in all of the kinds of weather conditions that are possible in early February – rain, freezing cold, and strong winds – and we won’t know what to expect this year until a day or two before the race.  Let us hope for fair skies!

El's Drive-In

We normally have lunch in Atlantic Beach here in the condo rather than in one of the very good restaurants that we have discovered in the area over the years.  But last Tuesday we had still not accumulated enough provisions, so we stopped for lunch at a place that is an institution in Morehead City, El’s Drive-In.

There are a lot of things about the tiny, non-descript brick building out on Arendell Street just past the hospital that are unique.  First of all, “El’s” is short not for a woman named Ellen or Eleanor but for Elvin Franks, who opened it in 1959 when I was not yet old enough to drive, let alone drive in.  Notice, too, that it is a “drive-in,” not a “drive-through” as most places are these days.  That means that there is no window to approach as at other fast-food places for ordering and picking up.  Instead, customers simply pull into the large parking lot in front of the building, which is completely unmarked, and in which other vehicles are always parked, fanned out randomly facing the building, an arrangement that baffled us when we first came here.  After a very short wait in the car, a woman – there are usually only two working – approaches your car and takes your order, jotting it down on a tiny pad, the kind that would have been used in most diners in this country for the past fifty years.  When the car in front of you receives its order and drives off, you simply pull forward and take its place.  It’s an admirably efficient arrangement.

One by one, the orders are somehow filled from the tiny brick building, which has no inside seating but apparently a kitchen that expands in some mysterious way to accommodate all of the food that passes through it every day, and that is a lot of food.  Out in the parking lot are everything from beat-up pickup trucks to late-model SUVs.  Somehow, the women work together to ensure that no car pulling into the parking lot goes unnoticed, and in due time your order will be hustled out to you in a plain brown paper bag.  A woman in a black sedan who did not know the unwritten rules of El’s pulled in the parking lot in front of everybody else, looking confused, and backed her car up several times, trying to find the correct place to orient herself and not block anyone else.  Eventually she caught on.

The observant customer might notice, too, the sign on the front window that says No Credit or Debit Cards, exactly as a transaction would have been in 1959, except no sign would have been necessary then.  No prices are shown anywhere on the sign, but the bill is always less than expected.  A generous tip is customarily added to the bill.  More than fifty years ago, I worked one summer at a Steak ‘N Shake in Winter Park, FL while attending college – it was one of those places where orders are taken in the same way but delivered on a tray that fits onto the partially-open driver’s window – and tips were greatly appreciated. 

What did we order?  One of the Spécialités de la Maison:  shrimp burgers, hushpuppies, and coleslaw.  The shrimp burger is fried shrimp, coleslaw, and cocktail sauce on a bun, and some  aficionados claim they originated in this area, either in Beaufort or perhaps in Salter Path at another El’s-like drive-in called the Big Oak.  It is very good!  Martha makes a healthier version by using grilled, blackened shrimp instead of fried.  We will have it often for lunch, hopefully (if the weather is nice) seated at the little bistro table on our balcony.

Settling In

We have been here four days now and have settled in to a relaxing routine structured around the weather, the tides, and sunrise and sunset.  The weather has been wonderful, highs in the upper 50s and on Wednesday 70 degrees, about 20 degrees warmer than Highlands.  We know that more seasonable (i. e. “colder”) weather is on the way, but for now we are getting out of doors as much as possible. 

With the exception of Wednesday morning, when thick fog moved in from the ocean, I have watched three sunrises from the dune-top deck, all of them completely different.  Even before it makes its appearance over the ocean, the lavender-rose light is refracted all around the horizon, which is a beautiful phenomenon. 

It is hard to explain to most people who are not familiar with this area that we face south over the ocean, not east as one does in Kitty Hawk. 

Because of this orientation, we can watch both the sunrise and the sunset from our dune-top deck.  The sunsets are especially spectacular and I expect that in due time I will post some photos in this blog.

For our first morning here, I had entered an event in my iPhone’s calendar:  GO FOR A RUN!!!  And that is exactly what we both did.  We have a lot of choices for running routes here, all of them flat and interesting.  The condo is only a mile from Fort Macon State Park with its pristine beaches, nature trails, and historic exhibits, as well as welcome restrooms.  It is about two-and-a-half miles to the Fort with a wide bicycle path most of the way, which makes for a great five-mile run.  If the tide is out, we can run a little farther and come back on the beach.

We often complete a shorter three-mile run to a Picnic Area halfway to the Fort, where there are restrooms, beach access, and a long enough paved parking lot aisle that we can run intervals there, back and forth from one end to the other.  That’s where I went this week, coming back on the beach.  At low tide the beach is wide and flat and perfect for running, and there is little that can be compared to running with the Atlantic Ocean at your elbow, scattering up the flock of seagulls that is usually parked on the beach and watching the sanderlings skitter away on their tiny stick legs.

Last year, we noticed that some new benches had been installed just below the dunes, and there was a plaque on the one just outside our condo remembering Matt Cobb, who had died in 2021. 

He was born the same year as I was, and I never fail to pause on the way back from a run and think about this man and his well-spent life.  That verse on the plaque  - “Be young, be foolish, but be happy!” – I vaguely remembered, and a Google search found that it was a song by the Tams from the Sixties, apparently a favorite of Matt.  I even found a YouTube video of them performing this hit song of 1968, including a dance routine reminiscent of the Temptations and so many other African-American musical groups of the era, and each of them seemed to be wearing, of course . . . a tam. 

Be young, be foolish, but be happy
Be young, be foolish, but be happy
Don't let the rain get you down, it's a waste of time
A waste of time
Have your fun, live everyday in the bright sunshine
The bright sunshine

Kitty Hawk

Morning at the Kitty Hawk Pier.  I went out onto the beach for my morning Tai Chi, and together with two dozen or so other early-risers watched a gorgeous sunrise.

Then I walked on the beach a little, looking at shells, and came upon this jellyfish that had washed up with the morning tide.  We look forward every day here to what the ocean delivers every morning on the incoming tide.

 
I thought I saw some dolphins leaping out in the calm surf but was too slow to take any photos.  Martha, watching from the balcony of the hotel, said that she definitely saw them.  We met in the Aviator Bar and Bistro for breakfast, which featured a large replica of the 1903 Wright Brothers airplane and contained menu items like The Orville and The Wilbur. 

It was a pleasant and relatively short drive from Kitty Hawk to Atlantic Beach, and we arrived in plenty of time to take care of all of the essentials for making life comfortable here for two months – a stop at the Friendly Market for Shrimp Chowder and a trip to the Food Lion down the road to begin stocking the pantry.  It was good to be here again in our familiar condo building overlooking a swimming pool (closed for the winter) and the walkway to a dune-top deck where I enjoy my morning Tai Chi most days.  

There are not many occupied units here this time of year, but I try not to be self-conscious about being on display for those few who are year-round residents.  A couple of years ago one of them (Sharon) met me one day and said, “Oh!  You’re the Tai Chi Man!”

We went down to said dune-top deck after sunset with two glasses of Prosecco, courtesy of the Food Lion, had a little toast, and gave thanks for safe travel.

New Year's Day

A New Year!  New opportunities, new challenges, new achievements.  As a runner – and this blog is ostensibly about running, after all – one of the things I always do at the end of one year and the beginning of another is to review my running log and start a new one.  I have used the same little “Day Planner” for many years now to track my daily mileage, and I always give myself (and Martha) a new one for Christmas.  I keep a running total each week and total it up at the end of the year, and then I record it on a spreadsheet.  My highest annual mileage was in 2005 (1578 miles) and my lowest was this year (477).  I could create a graph of my running mileage showing the gradual decline in mileage, sort of like the Dow Jones Average in free-fall, but readers of this blog might think I was compulsive if I did that. 

I have learned to accept that an aging runner logs fewer miles and slower times.  I will  wryly say, “The older I get, the faster I was.”  I said that to another runner about my age after a race last year and he pointed out, “Yes, but you are exactly the runner that you are right now!”  And that is what I have been telling myself these days.  Also, I note with some amazement that, not counting the unknown number of miles I ran before I began keeping records in 1995 (a decade of “jogging” whenever I could find the time), I have run 32,450 miles so far in my life, about 7,500 miles more than the circumference of the earth.

Not having run more than two miles the previous week due to temperatures in the single digits and my unwillingness to brave such conditions, I was eager to finally get to Atlantic Beach and continue my second journey around the earth!  But we had decided to make one more stop on our way to our destination, and that was a night in Kitty Hawk at the northern Outer Banks, where we spent many vacations, mostly in April, and often in the little town of Duck.  We were looking forward with fond nostalgia to seeing the places we used to run there.  Not having been one of “them drunks” that Lynn was driving home last night, I awoke early, before anyone else at the Hampton Inn except a handful of staff at the front desk and in the breakfast bar.  “Not many people up and about, I see!” I said brightly to the desk clerk.  “No, I think most everyone will be sleeping in this morning,” the young man at the desk said.  I went outside for my morning Tai Chi, and saw that the thick fog of the previous night was breaking off and the sun was trying to shine, an auspicious beginning to a New Year.

There is always something to see along the way if a traveler is paying attention.  Martha spotted this sign at a rest area on US-64 just outside of Washington, NC, which I thought was just remarkable.

A little research on the internet later revealed that the “Prayer of the Woods” has been used in Portuguese forest preservations for more than 1,000 years, and can be found at state parks, national forests, and national parks around the world.  It is translated from an older work, originally written in Portuguese, and first carved in wood in the gardens surrounding the beautiful Castelo dd Sao Jorge in Lisbon. One source identified the author as Alberto de Veiga Simões, a diplomat for Portugal during the first and second world wars who played a key role in helping persecuted minorities escape from the Nazis while stationed in Berlin in the 1940s. The original poem was titled ‘Ao Viandante’ - which translates roughly as: “To the person who passes through this place.”  What a lovely story!  But nowhere could I discover how or by whom this sign was erected in a rest area in Washington, NC, or who Brantley Peacock was.

After a long drive, US-64 took us to Manteo, which is familiar territory for us.  We knew a runner, Dave Cockman, who ran all the way from Murphy to Manteo, a distance of 544 miles, on this road several years ago over a period of two weeks.  He came through Highlands and was accompanied by several of my running friends on his way to Cashiers.  We were staying at the Outer Banks at the time and I met him and ran the last half-mile or so with him and some of his friends as he finished up his journey at Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head.  We have seen Dave at several races since then and follow his ultra-running on Facebook.

We have also run many marathons and half marathons here.  The starting line for the OBX Marathon and the Flying Pirate Half Marathon is a mile-and-a-half from our hotel.  We will never forget the inaugural OBX Marathon in 2006, which we ran mostly in the rain.  Those where character-building races indeed!

We arrived at the Hilton Gardens in Kitty Hawk just in time for dinner.  We drove north on Highway 12 to Duck and checked out the familiar restaurants where we had eaten over the years and they were all closed except one, which had a full parking lot and looked very busy.  But when we returned we found to our surprise that a restaurant was open on this New Year’s Day within walking distance of our hotel, the Run Down Café, a Caribbean-Asian themed restaurant where we had eaten many years ago.

Outside our oceanfront room, the sun was setting over the ocean, and we breathed deeply of the ocean air for the first time in many months. 

Time has its own rules out here.
The hours come and go like the tide,
Rising and falling all day long,
Leaving moon jellies behind on the sand.

Shelton Vineyards

Three months ago, we had planned to attend an event at Shelton Vineyards, a 1000-acre estate in Dobson, NC, organized by Our State Magazine.  I only recently learned that the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina has become an increasingly well-known area for growing wine and for wine tours: “You don't have to fly five hours and spend thousands of dollars to experience fine wines and scenic vineyards. The Yadkin Valley lies in the Piedmont and Foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Experts in the disciplines of Viticulture and Enology have compared this area to France’s Burgundy and Italy’s Piedmont.” 

Unfortunately, our plans were disrupted when Hurricane Ian blew through North Carolina, and not being eager to drive four hours in hurricane-force rain, we cancelled and took a partial refund – a rain check, you might say.  Winston-Salem is not very far from Dobson, and Martha had organized a visit to the vineyard which featured a wine tasting, a stay at the only Hampton Inn in the country with a wine bar, and a New Year’s Eve dinner and party at the vineyard’s Harvest Grill restaurant and The Barn.  We had avoided most of the heavier rain the previous day, and the drive to Dobson was an interesting one through a part of rural North Carolina we had not yet visited, a little south from Mt. Airy and Pilot Mountain, and through Elkin, where we stopped for lunch at an interesting place called Angry Troll Brewing, located in a huge building that was formerly a tobacco barn, wand here the pizza and beer were equally good.

I noticed that all of the wait staff were wearing identical T-shirts, which said that the brewery had an intriguing claim to fame.

The hostess explained to us that the major business in Elkin prior to the brewery (aside from tobacco, I presume) was a blanket factory, which no doubt went the way of so many textile industries in the south which closed down, leaving behind huge abandoned buildings and dying towns.  Elkin had done pretty well for itself, it seemed, and it did not hurt that it was also capitalizing on the Wine Tour industry.  It had a pretty little downtown area and Main Street with some nice shops.

We drove north from there through increasingly dense fog to the Hampton Inn in Dobson, where we boarded a shuttle to the tasting room a couple of miles down the road.  Our driver, Lynn, was a laconic older man born in the area who looked like he had grown up growing tobacco and who seemed to know the roads like the back of his hand.  The tasting room was in a beautiful building surrounded by 120 acres of vines, the oldest ones planted in 1999, and a friendly young lady gave us a tour of the facilities before we went in for a tasting.

We sampled the wines on a “wine tree,” which is something we had never seen before, five glasses arranged like a circular staircase on a little stand.  The wines were very good, especially an Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, and all of the grapes were grown on-site.

We returned to the hotel to freshen up, and then Lynn one again showed up to drive us and several other New Year’s Eve couples to the Harvest Grill for dinner.  It was very good, accompanied by a Shelton Vineyards wine, and beginning with an amuse bouche, a small plate containing those time-honored good-luck foods:  pork belly, collard greens, cornbread, and black-eyed peas.

After dinner, the shuttle bus arrived and took us to The Barn, an event venue that for tonight was filled with New Year’s Eve decorations, including nets in the ceiling holding at bay dozens of “2023” balloons ready to drop on revelers below at midnight.  It has been a long time since we made it ‘til that hour, however, and so in a little while we were again standing outside awaiting Lynn, whose arrival was a welcome one, and we returned to the Hampton Inn, grateful that Lynn knew these roads well because the fog had grown thicker and thicker as the evening progressed.  On the way, Martha heard Lynn receive a text message, and becase we were in the front seat and it was written in very large type (was Lynn far-sighted?) she was able to read it:  You hauling them drunks?  We were by no means drunk, having left the festivities early, but we were thankful that Lynn was driving.

Back in our room, we celebrated a tradition we began several years ago, reading through all of the comments we had taken turns writing on our little blackboard in the kitchen for 2022, ending with, “The Ocean is Calling.”

Happy New Year!

The Ocean is Calling

The Ocean is Calling, I wrote on the little blackboard in our kitchen – the final entry for 2022 as we prepare to embark on a journey to Atlantic Beach once again for our winter “Sabbatical.”  This will be our eighth year in an oceanfront condo, the first six of them staying in Martha’s Aunt Lizette’s place where she graciously allowed us to stay during that time when being out of doors in Highlands becomes something of a challenge.  The temperature at our house was 3 degrees on Christmas weekend, and 5 below zero in Highlands, resulting in many broken water pipes.  It is not a good idea to run in such extreme temperatures for any runner, and the older this runner gets the more he feels the cold.  I have photographic evidence of runs in the snow and the cold, when ice crystals formed on my beard, but those days belong to the past. 

Atlantic Beach is between 15 and 20 degrees warmer during these months, which means that on most days we can get outside and run or hike, or simply walk on the beach, and stay fit.  There is also a very good fitness center here with a swimming pool, weights, and yoga classes.  More importantly, it is a true Sabbatical for us, a time to grow closer to each other and closer to those vast elemental forces all around:  the wide south-facing ocean (which allows us to see both sunrises and sunsets), the tides, and the weather.  It is also a time to read and reflect and write.  The television is never turned on, unless there might happen to be an Insurrection or an Impeachment, both of which we hope to avoid this year.  I have written a lot of poetry out here on the edge of a continent, where there seem to be fewer interruptions.  And of course, this often-dormant blog revives itself, too, an opportunity to share with my few followers the wonders of a winter beach:

On a winter beach, sparsely populated,
The surf is too cold for children’s toes,
The children of summer with their little plastic pails.

The west wind sings and stings with sand.
A surf fisherman is bundled against the wind,
Anchored to the sand like his rod augur.
An old man is sweeping his metal detector softly
Side to side, listening intently through earphones,
Fishing for that bright hidden ping of surprise,
Up above the knee-high scarps, searching.
A lost wedding ring, a locket, a piece of silver
In the storehouse of the deep sand.

This year, we decided to take our time getting to Atlantic Beach, extending a journey of less than 500 miles to more than 900.  We also decided to leave a day earlier than planned because of an approaching weather front and heavy rain.  So on this first day we drove only as far as Winston-Salem, where we arrived early enough to spend some time in Old Salem. 

I even had time to walk up to “God’s Acre,” the Moravian graveyard near Salem College, where in keeping with Moravian beliefs all of the grave markers are exactly the same, as indeed all of us are when we leave this world – the egalitarianism of the deceased.

We stayed at our favorite safe harbor, the Historic Brookstown Inn, a converted cotton mill which is within walking distance of Old Salem and features irregular floors and heating systems, huge wooden beams and columns, and ancient brick walls. The Inn also features a tabby cat named Sally, who hitched a ride in a moving van and traveled cross-country years ago and (her owners having been located by the chip in her ear and having no objection) decided to take up the post of Hotel Cat.  On our last visit here just after Thanksgiving, the elusive Sally was nowhere to be found, but this time she made an appearance and reluctantly posed for some photographs, pretending not to notice the photographer, although welcoming the attention of two teenage girls who stroked her and cooed at her.  Typical cat behavior.