15 October 2019

Walking on the beach In October


Yesterday Sue and I took a walk on the beach along Beaufort Inlet. This is the entrance to the harbor at Morehead City, a deep-water port in North Carolina. The beach here extends from this inlet to another inlet on the western end of the barrier island called Bogue Banks, and is about 25 miles (40 km) long.


This actually a pretty typical October day. The historical average temperature here in mid-October is about 25ºC (77ºF). Yesterday was T-shirt weather. We walked under blue skies. A lot of people were out fishing and picking up shells, just enjoying the sunshine.


From this beach there are good views of the town of Beaufort — pronounced [BOH-furt] not [BYOO-furt] — which is one of the three oldest towns in N.C., founded in 1710 (Bath and New Bern are older). Sue and I haven't gone to Beaufort yet. That's for Thursday.


Today our plan is to take a 30 minute boat ride out to a place called Sand Dollar Island, on the back side of Shackleford Banks, to gather shells including, of course, sand dollars, which are a kind of sea urchin shaped like a flattened disk. We were told that is illegal to pick up live sand dollars. You can only collect the dead, sun-bleached ones. Sand Dollar Island isn't far from the Cape Lookout lighthouse, which is 10 miles distant in this photo..

12 comments:

  1. Beautiful photos.

    Yesterday and day before yesterday were also gorgeous days here in Virginia.

    Hello to Sue.

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  2. So jealous. I can conjure up the smell of the sea.

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    1. It does smell really good — salty and vaguely fishy, in a good way.

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  3. Very beautiful. Interesting that you've lived on two different oceans.

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    1. Yes, I have. One of the things that attracted me to San Franciso is that smell of salt water. It reminded me of home.

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  4. Enjoy that boat ride. I love picking up sea shells, too.

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    1. We did enjoy it, but we didn't find very many sand dollars.

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  5. Looks like your "playing tourists" and it sounds like F - U - N !!! Hope you find your perfect sand dollar. Around the Oregon Coast after many years between my mom, my dad and me we found just one that was completely in tact.

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    1. I found one perfect sand dollar, but it crumbled in my hand when I picked it up. Isn't that the way with perfect objects? So ephemeral. You have a lot of pounding surf in your ocean. Ours is a little more tranquil.

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