A trip to the coast

Shawn and I spent the weekend in Emerald Isle, a small coastal town along the Atlantic Ocean. Emerald Isle is toward the south part of the NC coast. The area is called the Crystal Coast.



We drove over Friday afternoon. The drive only took about 3.5 hours, but we are out of practice with long drives so it felt longer than it really was. The weather was wonderful--70s and sunny.

First, we spent some time enjoying the view from the deck.

We then went down to the beach and took a walk. I managed to pick up a handful of seashells along the way, and I even got Shawn to stop for a picture--never an easy feat!

More on our trip to come in the following days!

It's spring in NC

We have been fortunate enough to have spring-like weather since January. This has made for a great winter, but I am a bit frightened about what it might be foreshadowing for this summer (large amount of heat and humidity in my near future perhaps?). For now, Shawn and I have just been trying to enjoy the nice weather and not worry so much about the summer.

About three days ago, I noticed that the trees in the neighborhood were starting to bloom again. Every spring the trees get these beautiful, white blossoms on them. The trees later become a more standard green, eventually turning to gold around October before falling off. My favorite time though is when the trees are blossoming. We have one just outside our bedroom window, and it is lovely to wake up to.

Below are some pictures taken on my afternoon walk with Bella yesterday. I thought I would share the view of the trees, since Washington did have a lot of great trees, but not very many of them blossomed. I will say though that the photos don't quite do the trees justice. Guess you should just come out to NC to see them yourself!

  

 

A fruitful day

A few weeks ago my Dad asked when Shawn and I would start blogging again. He said he was tired of reading about Charleston. Well Dad, this one's for you!

I considered what our first blog back should be about. I thought about tying it in to the Duke-UNC game and the way the Tarheels took not only the win but the ACC Championship title as well. Of course we didn't think to take any pictures that night...

I thought about specifically finding some fun, outdoor North Carolina activity to use to secretly brag about our nice weather. Of course our weather has since decided that it likes to cycle to rainy by the weekend, making most of our weekends about errands and movies.  Nothing too blog worthy.

Finally, I decided I would just wait for something to come to me. And something came today--a delivery from the Papa Spud's service that delivers local, organic produce to my door every few weeks.

I had ordered a number of things for this week's box, but this week's standout was the grapefruit I received. I only get one grapefruit for my two credits (or however the system works) but I feel in this case I got my credit's worth.

This has to be the biggest grapefruit I have ever seen. Below is a picture of it next to a standard-sized orange. I don't know that the picture really does it justice though.

So I decided to get another comparison. Below is the grapefruit next to my head. Yes, it is almost the size of my head!

Now from this post you have hopefully learned a few things. One is that local and organic produce can actually be larger than all the crazy stuff we buy that is pumped full of preservatives or covered in pesticide. The bigger thing to take away here though is that Shawn and I don't lead very exciting lives. It seems that an over-sized grapefruit was the high point of my day. Now I'm going out to do some shopping--I will let you know if I come across any miniature vegetables at the supermarket. :-)

Charleston adventures continued

Saturday we continued our adventures in Charleston. We started the day with breakfast at a small restaurant named Toast. Toast had good reviews, including a review by the New York Times. I had some delicious peach french toast and Shawn enjoyed an omelet and biscuits and gravy. Although we had to wait nearly 40 minutes to get in, the bottom-less mimosas I enjoyed and the great food made it worth the wait. Charleston has a number of amazing restaurants, and I only wish we had more meals to eat there!

After breakfast we walked about a mile down to the aquarium. The tour book and online sites had recommended it, but after our trip to the Boston Aquarium, I wasn't expecting much. I would say it was better than the Boston Aquarium, and one of the reasons was because of the amazing view from the upper observation deck that looked out over the harbor. We were able to see a number of dolphins, which was really enjoyable.




We then scheduled an afternoon tour of Fort Sumter. Since we had an hour or so to wait, we grabbed from food from a nearby deli and ate in another garden near the water.


After that it was time for the Fort Sumter tour. We took a boat ride out to Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter is a man-made island that is the location of the first battle of the Civil War. We learned a number of things about the Fort, Charleston, and the Civil War, but I will just share one interesting story here.


As I mentioned, Fort Sumter was the location of the first battle of the Civil War, which is one of the bloodiest battles the United States has experienced. Fort Sumter was a federal fort that the Confederates attacked on April 12, 1861. Anderson, the major overseeing the fort, had only 85 men to defend all of Charleston and limited supplies. A surrender took place about 34 hours after the first shots, and Union forces spent nearly 4  years trying to get it back. As part of the terms of the surrender, Major Anderson requested that his men be able to fire a series of shots acknowledging their surrender of the Fort. During these shots, one solider incorrectly loaded his weapon and accidentally shot off his arm. He died from his injuries. So the first death of one of the bloodiest battles in our country's history was self-inflicted during a surrender.

Below are some pictures from the Fort. The walls used to be more than twice as high in many places.

You were able to see the original cannons and bricks.

You can even see how the cannons were able to be positioned, when you look closely.

After the trip to Fort Sumter, we spent more time walking around Charleston and the outdoor market. Then we headed to a haunted plantation--still not the same as the Haunted Palouse, but they had a number of houses that were entertaining and a fun haunted hayride.

The next morning we got up and headed back to Durham. Overall, Charleston was a nice city with a lot of history and beauty. It made for a great trip.