Sunday, June 9, 2013

The Beach 2013 June

Back down to South Nags Head for a week - at a different but 'old' place.  Sun, sand, surf - but fairly cool air and warmer water.  Nice relaxing week again.

At the beach again



The 'old' place is the large beach house where we have been about 4 years ago - it sort of funky with a huge single room for TV, relaxing, long dining table, and nice sized kitchen. We liked the wonderful Wi-fi which was non-existent previously.  Also the large TV allowed us to figure out how to use the DVD for watch the Jame Bond Skyfall, and our Roku worked well for watching Netflix - Deej is now addicted to MI-5 episodes (we are in the late 50s of about 90 episodes).  The kitchen lacked a steamer for cooking shrimp, and cooking it in water for only 3 minutes still made the fresh shrimp a little tough and rubbery.  So, we bought another steamer! The house is called Ocean Adventure, though its sign has started to peel off, so it looks more like "clean denture"!
Clean denture

It was nice and sunny, but too often very, very windy - think stingy sand on bare legs.  We got out to our own beach area, just a block away from out the screened back porch and across the little spillway bridge, across the road, and straight down the houses' dead-end block to the beach.  Shelling was not very good, even at low tide.  The best was the northern most Ocracoke public beach area - thousands of shells. Also pretty good at Pea Island beach, but very windy there. Jumped in the water 3 times during the week - the waves were pretty strong each time, fun, but hard to stay in for a long time - the water was not too chilly and easy to get used to after initial shocks.


Shopping- only forgot one cable, this for my small gps device (Radio Shack came through, again).  Deej got some great bargains when she went to Tanger mall one evening. Since public schools were still in session, the traffic was not as crowded as it will be next week and the rest of the summer.

Our main, new Garmin (nĂ¼vi® 2597LMT) gps was not great, as it seems to be only the North American City map, which does not recognise simple places like Coquina Beach or Bodie Lighthouse (too non-city places?).  We got to both of those anyhow -  long walk south on Coquina, and took the 45 minute tour to the top of Bodie. The Garmin otherwise does great generally on the highway and around cities - it told us about the 33 minute delay on our return, which seems to always happen leaving Va Beach area and going toward Williamsburg - as 5 lanes goes down to only 2 lanes.  Went through about 15 minutes of heavy downpour also during that same delay area.

Food - found the Sugar Creek restaurant the first night (Saturday), after not getting in to the Blue Moon Beach Grill.  Good food and view.  Went back the Blue Moon Monday night and got in after 45 minute wait - shared a fantastic bouillabaisse, overflowing with local seafood.  And Friday's noon BBQ sandwich with fried okra was fantastic at Sooeys. Otherwise our own cooking of shrimp and mahimahi was very tasty and satisfying. And I got my favorite blackberry cide on the way down and an even bigger jug on our way back at Morris' Market - yummy.

Computer and other equipment worked pretty well, and I got to experiment with the new GoPro camera and the Sonny Handycam. 

As I say the weather was pretty good - except for the even higher, long lasting winds as the tropical storm came through on Friday.

Philip visiting Barb in Richmond
It was nice visiting my sister Barb in Richmond, for about 40 minutes, on the way down on Sat. late morning.  I think we helped get her more acquainted with how to use her tracfone.

We got down to Ocracoke for the sunny day Wednesday - the ferry had to take a hour huge U route, because a storm had filled up sand along its usually short 20-minute route.  Saw dolphins on the way down on the ferry. Also got the new Jennettes' Pier at about 16.5 mile post.  Did not get over to Manteo or up to Duck

- oh, well. Overall another nice, relaxing week at the beach.