December 5-9, 2017 Cedar Point, North Carolina

We woke up this am to rain-top photo. We drove 40 miles to the other side of the Croatan national forest and are now camped at Cedar Point. 

This afternoon the sun came back out and it was 70. Very humid after the rain. John walking on the boardwalk over the salt marsh to photograph the sunset. 

There is about 2 miles of boardwalk and trail around the salt marsh. Sunset over the marsh. 

I worked on the masterpiece some more, got most of the yellow stitching around the white beads. Rained most of the day. We got out between storms and did a 3 mile hike. We are close to the Camp Lejeune Marine air station here, they blow things up all day long. Some are so loud that the bus vibrates. Guess it is good to know that if they need to defend us they will be good shots. 

A great egret in the salt marsh on our hike today. Another cool rainy day. John installed my pockets I made yesterday by my chair so I have more room for things.

The basket is coming along. It is about 11 inches by 1 inch.  It is still raining, windy and in the 40's. We don't have much motivation to go outside. John wanted to go out this afternoon so we decided it might be fun to drive out to and along the barrier islands and see what is there. 

Being in the 40's, windy and raining we didn't even want to get out of the car at the beach. The islands are about wide enough for three streets, they had mostly three rows of vacation beach houses, with a few beach souvenir stores, seafood restaurants, real estate agents in between. So on the way back we stopped at the specialty beer store-Harrika's Brew Haus and John got some fancy craft beers. He wanted this T-shirt, but already has more T shirts than will fit in the closet. He did get some of this Evil Twin, I always felt closer to IPA'S than I did to people beers. It is supposed to rain all day tomorrow too. . .

The basket is another inch taller and I am sewing some beads on it. 

December 3-4, 2017 New Bern, North Carolina

Started out cloudy today. We decided to take the historic Trolley tour of New Bern today. Then the sun came out, mid 60's and lovely.

We were the only people who showed up so we got a private tour. It was interesting, but more details than we would ever remember. John with Alice our tour guide at the Cedar Cemetery.  We are in the oldest section. The trolley is on the other side of the arch. The arch is made out of rock that is made out of compacted shells from when this area was a seabed. It absorbs water when it rains. There is a story that if the arch rains on you when you come through it you will be the next person to die. I love the spanish moss. 

Beautiful old headstones.  Town is full of cool older buildings. These are two of the huge ornate historic  houses we saw. Don't remember what kind they are.

A couple more. The green one is a 4 square-it has 4 rooms up stairs and 4 rooms downstairs.  Don't know the others. 

Yellow fall ginkgo leaves in front of another. After the bus tour we toured the gardens at Tryon Palace. The hedges are made of yaupon holly which is a native evergreen shrub here. I am sure the garden looks much better when things are blooming, but it was pretty cool now.

Another shot of the hedges and the fountain and a gazebo in another part of the garden.

Sweet smelling flowers, maybe citrus, yaupon holly berries, rosemary blossom, some kind of fruit tree blossoms. They were trained into a grape vine kind of shape in the kitchen garden. The trolley for our tour. These other hedges are in a garden across the street. 

The front and back of Tryon Palace. It was originally built in 1770 by Governor Tryon. He was one of the British rulers before the revolution. It later became the capital of North Carolina before it moved to Raleigh. It burned down in 1778. It was rebuilt from 1952-59 from the original blueprints on the original site. They had to move 50 houses, I-70 and the bridge over the Trent River to build there. Some doorways and gates from Tryon Palace. The yellow over the fence is from a church yard in town.

We were going to move on to another area today but decided since it was 65 and sunny today and supposed to rain the rest of the week that we would spend another day here and play outside. We boated  Upper Broad Creek today-a lovely black water cypress swamp. This cypress tree still has some of it's fall needles, most of them have now dropped theirs.  We stopped at the Latham/Whitehurst state park on the way for a stroll on their boardwalk. The hardwood forest there still has most of their fall leaves. 

The day and colors were phenomenal. 

More fall colors. 

My photos are probably getting a bit boring since they are all the same swampy photos, but I just love the colors. John paddling under a red tree.

I was getting into the reflections in John's wake. This black water saturates the colors and looks so good. 

The boardwalk at Latham/Whitehurst park, poison ivy growing on a stump in the middle of the river, ferns on a log we had to duck under and seed pods. 

November 30- December 2, 2017 New Bern, North Carolina

Another gorgeous low 70's day. It is so nice to be back where it is warm. We went to historic downtown New Bern today. I read about New Bern in some romance novels by Nicholas Sparks and  the Outlander series. It sounded so nice I always wanted to see it.  John doesn't want our destinations picked from my romance novels. . . It is a lovely city. I love the old buildings many from the 17-1800's.

First Presbyterian Church with fall color and another beautiful fall tree with spanish moss.

 

Not sure which church this is, but I saw three other people taking this same photo. The marina from the river walk.

A gazebo in a small park on the river walk. Bern means bear so the city symbol is a bear. Here are a couple cute painted bears around town. I also saw this bear head on a couple of the older buildings, this one is decorated for christmas. 

The historic courthouse with a really cool steeple and the methodist church. 

Of course we had lunch at the Beer Army brewpub. Here is John with their IPA. The food and the beer were very good. This pharmacy was the birthplace of Pepsi. It still has the old soda fountain but the rest of the shop sells Pepsi memorabilia. 

Another sunny high 60's day. We paddled 6 miles roundtrip on Cahooque Creek. John paddling between a small tree growing out of stump in the creek and some fall color. 

The water looks black deep but it is really tea colored brown when it is shallow. John as far back as we could get. There is supposed to be a family of gaters living here, but it must be too cold for them, or the took off when the heard us coming, we didn't see them. We did see some fish, great blue herons, and many other birds. 

John at lunch and paddling back. Beautiful paddle. When you camp or boat on the Neuse River you get to be entertained by the fighter jets from Cherry Point marine air station. Lots of  harriers, cool tp watch but very loud. 

A green anole which can turn brown or green depending on it's surroundings and tall reeds against blue sky. Rainy, cloudy and cool. We went to the Duck Decoy Festival in Harkers Island. It was the coolest duck decoy festival I have ever been too. Of course it is the only one. It was very interesting. The decoys were really pretty.

The decoy festival was held in the elementary school. The hall was lined with the kids entries for the poster contest. Some decoys. I don't have the eye to tell a great decoy from a mediocre one. They were all cool. You could buy naked ducks and paint them- they even come with the eye's included and there were booths with hand made duck calls and whistles. 

One of the booths was selling handmade pecan shell decoys. They were so cute I got a couple-a wood duck and a loon. I always buy some locally made xmas ornaments on the road. I got this oyster shell santa at a  booth on the side of the road. The bar in one of the breweries had a map of the North Carolina coast made out of different types of barely. We passed the Sanitary fish market and restaurant- guess that is better than unsanitary. Licence plate with North Carolina light houses, and the Cape Lookout National Seashore is more barrier islands right off the coast south of the Outer Banks. A voice level chart from the elementary school- I love it that the highest level-shouting is only for the teachers.  After the decoy festival we went to Beaufort and Morehead City so John could visit 3 breweries. In Morehead they were having the Chowder and Cheer event. You could purchase a ticket and taste chowder and a taster glass of what ever cheer the establishment has all over town. Looked like over 30 places, so the breweries were packed with Chowder people.  They favored bud light over the tasty craft beers. Hope they had better taste in the chowder.

This statue of Black Beard is HUGE, I only came up to his boots. Blackbeard ran his pirate ships in this area. Even had a house up the coast. from what I remember of photos of him he was a bit heavier than this.