A day at the beach

Yesterday the fog lifted and a brisk northeast wind started blowing. That brought sunny, clear weather, and cooler temperatures that I welcomed. I drove five miles over to the beach at about 9:00 yesterday morning and took a walk, taking some pictures. By the way, I have a new camera and I'm trying to figure out how to set it up to get the best results I can get.

The barrier island across the sound from Morehead City is 25 miles (40 km) long and is called Bogue Banks. It runs east-west, so that when you are on the beach looking at the ocean, you are looking south toward the Bahamas, which are 700 or 800 miles distant. Most people are surprised to learn that there are south-facing beaches on the U.S. east coast, but there are, both in North Carolina and New York (Long Island). Here, we've always been used to seeing the noon sun shining out over the sea.

Morehead City is 500 miles south of New York City, and 500 miles east of Atlanta. The island of Bermuda is about 600 miles to the east, out in the Atlantic. Morehead's people are southern, but they are part of a cultural and linguistic zone that stretches south down the coast from New Jersey through Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. They have always been seafarers, not plantation owners.

The local accent here in Carteret County, N.C., isn't a Southern drawl (as in South Carolina) but a coastal brogue that sounds like Old English to Americans from other regions. Most of the people here came from England via Boston and New England. They were fishermen and whalers who migrated down the coast over several generations. By the way, the first English colony in North America was established on the North Carolina coast in 1585. It was a failure and disappeared mysteriously off the face of the continent — the colonists were never heard from again.

The warm Gulf Steam ocean current flows north just 30 miles offshore from Morehead City, which used to have "Fisherman's Paradise" as its official motto. Maybe it still does. The climate is mild, since the prevailing winds come from the southwest (Florida and the Gulf of Mexico). That said, it is also true that the N.C. coastline juts pretty far out into the Atlantic Ocean, in the path of passing hurricanes. Those storms can bring some very rough weather in late summer and through autumn.