Here We Go

April 17, 2016
Morehead City, NC

Mile Marker 205

April 18, 2016
Beaufort Marine Center
Mile Marker 198

Homeward Bound

We haven't moved a gosh darn inch.  The winds have been too high to move the boat around the corner to Beaufort.  We have friends that have stayed in Dowry Creek Marina for about a week waiting to cross the Alligator River.  Most boats are staying put because of high seas. Some of the waves have been reported to be over five feet in the Neuse River. 

Oh yes, we are coming home with our new-to-us truck. It makes so much sense to leave the boat in North Carolina. It takes about a month to get to Norfolk in the fall, depending on the weather and neither of us want to leave Maine in September to avoid the cold we had when we left Maine October 15, 2015.  Enough about leaving the boat in Beaufort NC, I think that you understand the logic in our choice, the downside is not having a boat in Rockland Harbor.

I am not sure when we will be back in Maine.  We have family and friends that we want to visit  along the way. We do know that it will be late April or early May. I hope to see you then.

I am sad to leave the boat, it is small and easy to organize, therefore lots of time for fun. We had time for people, wildlife, and enjoying the villages and the cities.  I am not looking forward to traffic and the rush, rush of the highway.  I am reading the book  River Horse by William Least Heat-Moon.  A friend gave it to me and I am glad that she did. I highly recommend it to those that travel by boat along the shores.

"In his most ambitious journey ever, Heat-Moon sets off aboard a small boat he named Nikawa, ("river horse" in Osage) from the Atlantic at New York Harbor in hopes of entering the Pacific near Astoria, Oregon.  He and his companion, Pilots, struggle to cover some five thousand watery miles-more than any other cross-country river traveler has ever managed-often following in the wakes of our most famous explorers, from Henry Hudson to Lewis and Clark.

 Here is paragraph from his book.

Between Utica and Rome, only fourteen miles, industries came down to canalside, although a screen of scrub trees camouflaged most of them, effectively creating an appearance of ruralness so that we slipped past downtown Utica before realizing sixty thousand people were moving just beyond the woody scrim of narrow bottomland.  In river travel today perhaps nothing is finer than arrival in the center of a town without having to undergo those purgatorial miles of vile sprawl, hideous bill boards, and reiterated franchises where we become fugitives of the ganged chains in an endless surround of noplacesness, where the shabbier of architectural detritus washes up against the center of a town.  To come in by canal or river is to see a genuine demarcation between country and city and to fetch upon the historic heart of things the way travelers once did when towns had discernible limits, actual edges and voyagers knew when they had entered or departed a place.  To approach Boston or San francisco by the bay or New Orleans or St.  Paul by river is to arrive suddenly and merrily like Dorothy before Oz-out of the woods and into the light.

Pictures of our fun since we have been at the city dock in Morehead City dock, nearly two week.  People and wild life are two of my favorite parts of the ICW trip, and  the beauty of the landscape.

...and yes a cat on a boat

I have a hard time deciding what picture to post, so I post most of them

Dinner with friends

I pirated this picture from a friends blog. I just love these three.

Cocktail Hour

Here is Linda Jean traveling to her summer home.

 Even though we will be traveling by car I will continue my blog through the summer and you will know in the fall when we start the journey south again.

Tricia