And so it ends, as all truly great beach trips must, in an epic manner.
Unless, that is, you don't consider a two-mile trudge through driving rain on a mostly deserted beach epic.
The ocean was warmer than the rain. On the way up the beach - pre-deluge - I chatted with a guy reeling in a string of croakers and on the slog back - soaked through my shirt and bathing suit to the skin - a guy gave me a high-five from the dry security of his deck. By halfway home from the pier, the rain had so saturated my new orange hat that drips from my hair ran down my face despite the straw brim.
It was glorious. It was elemental. It was so much better than not risking a walk at all because of the intimidating look of the clouds. Any seasoned beach-goer would have done the same.
I'd driven down, windows open, Tuesday morning, much of the way behind a rattletrap delivery truck that smelled like sour milk when I was downwind of it.
My soundtrack was all beach mixtapes made for me by fellow beach-goers, so reflecting their states of mind. From 2003 came a giddy paean to love, heavy on female voices, and the other from 2008, all about heartbreak and mostly sung by men. Both have beach associations for me beyond the givers' intents.
My stellar beach read was a birthday gift, Sherman Alexie's memoir/poetry pastiche, "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" and while I finished it, it's a little worse for the wear after this week.
Sand clings to a circle where a sticker once read "Autographed copy" and the book jacket is inexplicably stained brown in places. It's also mildly waterlogged along the edges, as if a particularly bold wave lapped it at high tide.
I can't be watching my book every minute, you know?
In what is surely a first for at least the last decade, the cottage where we stayed had no wifi. Not even any available wifi to steal from a neighboring house. And while my online needs are minimal when I'm at the beach, technically, I'd be a fool not to check given that I work for myself.
My solution was to drive to the closest wifi hot spot, check my email quickly, respond only when absolutely necessary and return to the cocoon of non-digital access.
It only made this beach trip sweeter.
The big news was all the progress made on the beach replenishment since I was in Kitty Hawk in late June. Then we'd seen the dredging boats far out in the ocean, even at night, but no activity onshore.
Now it's full-steam ahead, pipes have been laid and sand is already widening the beach in places I've been walking for decades. An enormous - four story? - contraption glides in and out of the water, looking like a gargantuan metal spider, while measuring the ratio of water and sand with its sensitive feet.
On Wednesday, I tried walking past the construction site on the beach and a guard sent me back the way I came, but by Thursday, he was gone and I could get closer to the Kitty Hawk Pier to watch heavy equipment operators moving sand around at Southern Shores.
The collateral damage of all this reshuffling of sand seems to be the horseshoe crabs whose carcasses littered the beach every morning this week like used firework casings on July fifth.
At night, the dredging boats are strung with white, red and green lights until they resemble a colorful riverboat (or, if you squint, like a Chinese dragon) as they move up and down the coastline, out to sea and back to shore.
Not everyone is a fan of all the hustle and bustle activity when they're on vacation, but I'm guessing it'll just be one of the beach details I'll probably always associate with 2017, like the noticeable after-affects of Hurricane Isabel in Summer 2004.
Eating crabs at I Got Your Crabs one evening, I turned to my companion, as fine a crab picker as I am, and asked if we couldn't be 100% certain we were the most adept pickers in the entire place. Without so much as looking at me or the people who surrounded us, I got an impatient, "Duh."
Not that we went to dinner to feel superior, but we also know our strong suits and aren't ashamed to admit them.
But that was our only foray into the commercial beach world and all the other meals (which for me alone seems to mean breakfast, lunch and dinner) were taken on the porch with a view of the ocean while I slept my usual nine hours to the best of all possible soundtracks: crashing waves.
Don't get the wrong idea. I know how incredibly lucky I am to have landed back at the beach again for the fourth time since Easter. Or, as a favorite beach-lover put it:
Wow, another trip to the beach! Some summer, eh?
Some summer indeed. It's turning out to be epic in a whole lot of ways besides browner legs.
Showing posts with label kitty hawk pier. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kitty hawk pier. Show all posts
Friday, August 4, 2017
Friday, July 31, 2015
Girls of Summer
I was raised to enjoy everything about a beach getaway.
There are the signs I pass cruising down Route 460 on a Wednesday morning:
Sunday night church services (plenty of time to recover from Saturday night)
Local produce and pickling spices ('tis the season)
Pass the Salt Cafe (shouldn't the kitchen know how to season the food?)
Mutt & Jett's Country Kitchen (do millennials even get the reference?)
There's the country store where I stop to get a six-pack of RC Cola in bottles and spot a sign next to a handsome old, chipped stone jug, reading, "Not perfect but I still have character and purpose."
A steal at $20.
My destination is an orange beach cottage with red trim and a porch that fronts the ocean (although there is a road - but no house- between us and it), an outdoor shower (beach view but no sky overhead) and two of my sisters in residence.
They're two of my favorites, but our beach preferences couldn't be more different. They keep the windows closed and the A/C on, despite a constant ocean breeze, but allow me to keep my bedroom windows open as long as my door stays shut.
They're sun worshippers while I prefer to be under an umbrella and a layer of SPF 70.
I'm gone for hours walking to the Avalon and Kitty Hawk piers north and south of us, meeting people along the way and being shown how to cast nets, while neither of them walks for more than 15 minutes.
When I make an effort to rise and shine at the ungodly hour of 8:30 in the morning, I discover they've been up since 7, awaiting my entrance.
And the laugh attacks are pretty much non-stop. When you've known two women their entire lives, you have a lot of memories to share and a lot of sentences that don't need finishing. What's funny is how they - along with my other three sisters - have always counted on me to be the keeper of the memories.
What year did Mom and Dad begin taking us to the beach? What turned another sister into someone so mean? What happened the first night we met a potential brother-in-law?
While I was there, we were invited to two happy hours, one by yet another sister who'd just the day before celebrated a birthday at her cottage and then the next night by an Irish friend of Sister #2's.
As Pru would be the first to point out, what's not to like about two nights of hors d'oeuvres for dinner?
It was at the first happy hour that the four sisters toasted with the RC Colas I'd brought, a beverage steeped in memories for all six of us. Growing up, Mom would buy one six pack of soda a week, always either Coke or preferably, RC, her favorite. Each one of us got one bottle to enjoy anytime during the week we chose to.
This was back in the olden days, kids, back before high fructose corn syrup and childhood obesity ruined everything.
There we also were entertained by Sister #3's ragtag bunch of bachelor friends, all of whom had changed their plans and come a day earlier once they'd heard about the sister happy hour on Wednesday. It's nice to know we still have that kind of draw.
When we left there to a chorus of "please stays," it was because we wanted to head to Dune Burger and gab while inhaling classic beach burgers al fresco while the sun set.
Thursday's happy hour had the benefit of an oceanfront deck (where, impressively, the outdoor shower was situated), loads of seafood (shrimp, mussels and clams) and several people we didn't know, which always makes it more fun for me. The Irish couple I especially enjoyed, as they drolly noted that they "live on an island, can't swim and don't like seafood."
Not so the rest of us, who dove in amid jokes about getting "the gout," hilarious to everyone except Sister #2 who actually got gout last year after eating seafood for 14 straight days at the beach. We all agreed that it sounds much funnier when referred to as "the gout," although #2 didn't seem to think so.
That night, we caught a major fireworks show on the beach right in front of where we were staying, an unexpected bonus given how long it's been since July 4th. I do wonder, though, how it is that given the abundance of signs saying that fireworks are illegal in North Carolina, there are always visitors shooting them off?
Both nights were gorgeous for the brightness of the moonlight late into the night, something we took advantage of by talking on the porch until we couldn't access our nouns any longer. My only regret was that Friday was the full moon lighthouse climb, something I've been trying to do for months but it never seems to work out.
Days were spent talking and reading on the beach, all the more interesting because I'm currently reading James Fox's book, "The Five Sisters: The Langhornes of Virginia," a fascinating biography of the fabulous Langhorne sisters. Because so much of the book deals with the dynamics of the sisters' relationships, I was able to read aloud entire passages that, with a few name changes, could have been written about me and my sisters. They roared listening.
Apparently the problems of inter-sister relationships are not only universal, but timeless.
Today dawned rainy as we devoured cinnamon puffs, a breakfast pastry that had been a favorite during our childhoods (and one I hadn't had in decades) and local peaches so juicy they ran down our arms while eating them (my stone fruit allergy limited me to just a few bites until my tongue began itching and swelling) before the sun broke through and we headed straight for the beach.
Coming across an abandoned boogie board on the way, I step on it and do my best surfing impression, cracking up both my sisters.
"Karen, you're a mess!" Sister #4 laughs, doubled over. Sister #2 just shakes her head, her usual response to my humor.
No, a mess is the sign I pass on the way home that reads:
Weekend Special!
Gizzards
Livers
Diesel $2.59
But, me, a mess? Au contraire. I may not be perfect but I still have character and purpose. I don't know that I can let myself go for $20, however.
There are the signs I pass cruising down Route 460 on a Wednesday morning:
Sunday night church services (plenty of time to recover from Saturday night)
Local produce and pickling spices ('tis the season)
Pass the Salt Cafe (shouldn't the kitchen know how to season the food?)
Mutt & Jett's Country Kitchen (do millennials even get the reference?)
There's the country store where I stop to get a six-pack of RC Cola in bottles and spot a sign next to a handsome old, chipped stone jug, reading, "Not perfect but I still have character and purpose."
A steal at $20.
My destination is an orange beach cottage with red trim and a porch that fronts the ocean (although there is a road - but no house- between us and it), an outdoor shower (beach view but no sky overhead) and two of my sisters in residence.
They're two of my favorites, but our beach preferences couldn't be more different. They keep the windows closed and the A/C on, despite a constant ocean breeze, but allow me to keep my bedroom windows open as long as my door stays shut.
They're sun worshippers while I prefer to be under an umbrella and a layer of SPF 70.
I'm gone for hours walking to the Avalon and Kitty Hawk piers north and south of us, meeting people along the way and being shown how to cast nets, while neither of them walks for more than 15 minutes.
When I make an effort to rise and shine at the ungodly hour of 8:30 in the morning, I discover they've been up since 7, awaiting my entrance.
And the laugh attacks are pretty much non-stop. When you've known two women their entire lives, you have a lot of memories to share and a lot of sentences that don't need finishing. What's funny is how they - along with my other three sisters - have always counted on me to be the keeper of the memories.
What year did Mom and Dad begin taking us to the beach? What turned another sister into someone so mean? What happened the first night we met a potential brother-in-law?
While I was there, we were invited to two happy hours, one by yet another sister who'd just the day before celebrated a birthday at her cottage and then the next night by an Irish friend of Sister #2's.
As Pru would be the first to point out, what's not to like about two nights of hors d'oeuvres for dinner?
It was at the first happy hour that the four sisters toasted with the RC Colas I'd brought, a beverage steeped in memories for all six of us. Growing up, Mom would buy one six pack of soda a week, always either Coke or preferably, RC, her favorite. Each one of us got one bottle to enjoy anytime during the week we chose to.
This was back in the olden days, kids, back before high fructose corn syrup and childhood obesity ruined everything.
There we also were entertained by Sister #3's ragtag bunch of bachelor friends, all of whom had changed their plans and come a day earlier once they'd heard about the sister happy hour on Wednesday. It's nice to know we still have that kind of draw.
When we left there to a chorus of "please stays," it was because we wanted to head to Dune Burger and gab while inhaling classic beach burgers al fresco while the sun set.
Thursday's happy hour had the benefit of an oceanfront deck (where, impressively, the outdoor shower was situated), loads of seafood (shrimp, mussels and clams) and several people we didn't know, which always makes it more fun for me. The Irish couple I especially enjoyed, as they drolly noted that they "live on an island, can't swim and don't like seafood."
Not so the rest of us, who dove in amid jokes about getting "the gout," hilarious to everyone except Sister #2 who actually got gout last year after eating seafood for 14 straight days at the beach. We all agreed that it sounds much funnier when referred to as "the gout," although #2 didn't seem to think so.
That night, we caught a major fireworks show on the beach right in front of where we were staying, an unexpected bonus given how long it's been since July 4th. I do wonder, though, how it is that given the abundance of signs saying that fireworks are illegal in North Carolina, there are always visitors shooting them off?
Both nights were gorgeous for the brightness of the moonlight late into the night, something we took advantage of by talking on the porch until we couldn't access our nouns any longer. My only regret was that Friday was the full moon lighthouse climb, something I've been trying to do for months but it never seems to work out.
Days were spent talking and reading on the beach, all the more interesting because I'm currently reading James Fox's book, "The Five Sisters: The Langhornes of Virginia," a fascinating biography of the fabulous Langhorne sisters. Because so much of the book deals with the dynamics of the sisters' relationships, I was able to read aloud entire passages that, with a few name changes, could have been written about me and my sisters. They roared listening.
Apparently the problems of inter-sister relationships are not only universal, but timeless.
Today dawned rainy as we devoured cinnamon puffs, a breakfast pastry that had been a favorite during our childhoods (and one I hadn't had in decades) and local peaches so juicy they ran down our arms while eating them (my stone fruit allergy limited me to just a few bites until my tongue began itching and swelling) before the sun broke through and we headed straight for the beach.
Coming across an abandoned boogie board on the way, I step on it and do my best surfing impression, cracking up both my sisters.
"Karen, you're a mess!" Sister #4 laughs, doubled over. Sister #2 just shakes her head, her usual response to my humor.
No, a mess is the sign I pass on the way home that reads:
Weekend Special!
Gizzards
Livers
Diesel $2.59
But, me, a mess? Au contraire. I may not be perfect but I still have character and purpose. I don't know that I can let myself go for $20, however.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
She Can Read, But Can She Fish?
We were beginning to think it was ark-building time down here, but the rain finally stopped long enough for outdoor activity. I suggested a walk and my housemates enthusiastically agreed, so we set out for the pier, a little more than a mile away.
We certainly weren't the only souls seeking the great outdoors; there were dog walkers, parents walking a leashed toddler (soapbox time), a bocce ball game and a woman using a cane and collecting shells. They all looked pleased as I felt to finally be on the beach.
Not so much my crew. Gradually, our foursome became a trio and eventually it was just me who arrived at the pier, soaked from the waist down thanks to the incoming tide. If I'd have been smart, I'd have worn a bathing suit, but I hadn't been that optimistic.
Up on the pier, I walked the abbreviated length of it (never rebuilt after Isabel took off the last third) and admired the view back at shore. I happened upon a couple of guys fishing and inquired if that was what this weather was good for.
"It sure is," the crustier one enthused. "Been catching trout all afternoon!" There were three or four fish there. Shows how much I know; trout are in the ocean?
The other guy looks at my wet legs and points at them, asking, "Water still nice and warm?" I nodded. "Yea, I guess that and fishing are all this weather is good for," I shrugged.
"Well come back and Cap'n Wally'll teach you how to fish," he said, pointing at the crusty guy who was now nodding and smiling at me.
"Maybe I will," I half-promised, taking my wet self back down the pier steps to look for my wimpy housemates.
Unlike some people, I bet Cap'n Wally would be willing to walk a lousy couple of miles with me. Hell, he'd probably even fry up the trout if I asked him to.
I'm just not sure about the conversational potential there and much as I like trout, that's just not worth the risk. Plus he probably listens to classic rock.
Besides, nobody would believe for a second that I'm the fishing type. That said, Thomas McGuane's The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing was one of the most beautiful books I ever read.
I know, I know. That still doesn't make me the fishing type. Sorry, Cap'n Wally.
We certainly weren't the only souls seeking the great outdoors; there were dog walkers, parents walking a leashed toddler (soapbox time), a bocce ball game and a woman using a cane and collecting shells. They all looked pleased as I felt to finally be on the beach.
Not so much my crew. Gradually, our foursome became a trio and eventually it was just me who arrived at the pier, soaked from the waist down thanks to the incoming tide. If I'd have been smart, I'd have worn a bathing suit, but I hadn't been that optimistic.
Up on the pier, I walked the abbreviated length of it (never rebuilt after Isabel took off the last third) and admired the view back at shore. I happened upon a couple of guys fishing and inquired if that was what this weather was good for.
"It sure is," the crustier one enthused. "Been catching trout all afternoon!" There were three or four fish there. Shows how much I know; trout are in the ocean?
The other guy looks at my wet legs and points at them, asking, "Water still nice and warm?" I nodded. "Yea, I guess that and fishing are all this weather is good for," I shrugged.
"Well come back and Cap'n Wally'll teach you how to fish," he said, pointing at the crusty guy who was now nodding and smiling at me.
"Maybe I will," I half-promised, taking my wet self back down the pier steps to look for my wimpy housemates.
Unlike some people, I bet Cap'n Wally would be willing to walk a lousy couple of miles with me. Hell, he'd probably even fry up the trout if I asked him to.
I'm just not sure about the conversational potential there and much as I like trout, that's just not worth the risk. Plus he probably listens to classic rock.
Besides, nobody would believe for a second that I'm the fishing type. That said, Thomas McGuane's The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing was one of the most beautiful books I ever read.
I know, I know. That still doesn't make me the fishing type. Sorry, Cap'n Wally.
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