Friday, March 16, 2018

First day at the beach

The great thing about the beach hereabouts in March is that, even though it's too cold to go in the water, you've got plenty of privacy. Mrs. Paco, Daisy and I went to Oak Island yesterday and the nearest person must have been well over a quarter mile away (nonetheless, Daisy still saw fit to bark at the minuscule figure in the distance). Also saw a whacking big piece of driftwood; looked like an eight-foot long pine log.

Really digging the clean air, and Mrs. Paco seems to be benefiting from it.



24 comments:

Steve Skubinna said...

I live in the Pacific Northwest and would not willingly live anywhere else. But if somebody put a gun to my head and said I had to move, I'd choose one of the barrier islands off the Carolina coast.

Paco said...

They're wonderful places, no two ways about it. I've always wanted to visit your neck of the woods, Steve. Those magnificent forests are very appealing or an old hiker like me.

Deborah said...

The first of many happy, enjoyable days to come. Hopefully, you'll find something more suitable for Daisy to fetch. I can imagine the confused look that only dogs and toddlers get when presented with the preposterous.

Perhaps when warmer weather lessens your private beach time, you'll head for a lake out west for a week or two or so. It will be populated on weekends, but weekdays will be great. Win-win situation.

rinardman said...

That's a clean beach, when one piece of driftwood is the only unusual thing to take a picture of.

You're lucky Obama stopped the rising oceans, or you'd have to go snorkeling to see that beach.

bruce said...

The south east is the part of the US which most interests me, except Florida (of course). Love those old iron bridges for one thing. Probably because I was born near one in Sydney and spent a lot of time in early years around it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Cove_Bridge
And of course:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Harbour_Bridge

This series of articles are great:

https://sites.google.com/site/matthewbridpath/bridges-and-highways-1/truss-bridges/6th-street-truss-bridge

bruce said...

Speaking of bridges (I'm in a very sombre reflective mood about it) and stuff:

Just venting, what is with the narcissism of young people nowadays, every mass death is an occasion for posing for smiling pics, hoping to be selected for the next Glee movie? :-

https://twitter.com/gloriathecat/status/974453696955330562

(I enjoy watching Glee btw).

bruce said...

PS, Linda Figg: 'bridges as art' -
https://heavy.com/news/2018/03/figg-bridge-collapse-florida-fiu-history/

Riiiight.

And this from a Youtube comment: 'Actually its the design of the snowflakes at the (FIU) school. The same snowflakes that can't cross the street. It a smart bridge too.. this school is a leader in this type of advanced building technique. Looks like its back to the drawing board. This was underway long before Trump. If Trump would have built it the budget would have been half, it would have been done ahead of schedule and it wouldn't collapse in under a week.'

I feel sorry for any leader right now trying to establish common sense sanity, like herding cats.

Mike_W said...

Great beach.
Isn't there reputed to be a pirate treasure buried on Oak Island?
Maybe you can dig it up in your spare time, Paco.

Paco said...

Mike: Nah, that Oak Island is off the coast of Nova Scotia.

But...wouldn't it be funny if the treasure hunters did have the wrong island? Haw!

RebeccaH said...

I love the beach and the ocean. I can sit on a beach and watch the ocean for hours. People wonder what's so good about staring at water, but the thing is, it's always changing and I've seen some wonderful things: dolphins jumping and playing, birds fishing, shrimp boats and oyster boats, cruise chips and tankers, a giant finned creature stealthily following a kayaker along the coast line. I don't really want to live on the coast, but I sure like visiting there.

Mike_W said...

Yeah, Paco, that would be funny :)
Maybe you could sink a few exploratory shafts, just in case.

Mike_W said...

"a giant finned creature stealthily following a kayaker along the coast line"

Ha, RebeccaH.

I'm lucky to have a long 4km beach where I live, and a 2 km promenade along a rocky shore for long walks.

There's even an island off the point called Shark Island, where I used to spearfish with a friend when we were 12.
We'd attach the speared fish to a rope connected to a buoy, which trailed fish juices and blood in the current.
The sharks just needed to follow the trail for a couple of tasty snacks.
But we were prepared, as we had diver knives and watched Sea Hunt, so we knew how to wrestle sharks.
The water dropped off to a deep, deep, dark blue out front, where we could sometimes see large dark outlines cruising.

Mike_W said...

Good to see Mrs. Paco happy and enjoying the beach, Paco.
I hope Daisy is better behaved during walks these days.

Paco said...

Mike: Mrs. Paco is doing better with her health, no doubt about it. Daisy's behavior is such that we usually walk her with two leashes. She's become very exclusive about who she lets near her "pack".

Skeeter said...

Beaches are OK but what excites me more about your retirement destination is the Intracoastal Waterway. Is there a boat in your future?

Paco said...

Skeeter: I'm a bit of a lubberly sort of fellow, although I have always enjoyed going out on the water. We're only a few miles from the Intracoastal Waterway; maybe somebody else's boat will be in my future (as I hitch a ride).

Skeeter said...

Paco, “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
While we Skeeters lived in Sydney our boat moored in nearby Broken Bay, at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River, gave us endless pleasure.
But we had one inviolable rule; we always cruised in sight of land -- on both sides of the boat.
We would look at maps of your Intracoastal Waterway and dream of where we could have gone if we had the same inland waterway stretched along the east coast of Australia.

JeffS said...

I was raised on the shores of the Puget Sound, and I agree with r-man: that is one clean beach! ONE log? Whoa.

Is Oak Island a part of the barrier islands in that region?

Paco said...

Skeeter: The 3,000-mile-long Intracoastal would be perfect for the kind of boating you like.

Jeff: Yeah, Oak Island is a barrier island that runs east to west along the extreme southeast of North Carolina's coast. You can watch the sun rise and set over the same ocean (er, if you get up that early, which I haven't been).

bruce said...

Skeeter, if you ever want to fly over there and show Paco some boating count me in. I grew up on Sydney Harbour and those intracoastal waterways over there look fabulous. I'll chip in to rent a boat. As long as there are no crocs.

bruce said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Men_in_a_Boat

Skeeter said...

bruce, that's a great idea. Paco could protect us from croc attacks with one of his larger bore equalizers.
Sadly, I'm no longer capable of long-haul air travel.

Re your "Three Men in a Boat" comment, in my earlier days I enjoyed a similar adventure: a "Three Men in a Car" pub-crawl from Knightsbridge to Oxford and return in one day. My two companions were ex-RAF and they knew all the best pubs. We actually went a bit west of Oxford -- until in sight of the Bristol Channel -- so we could say that we had crossed the entire country from coast to coast.

Paco said...

Well, we do have alligators, from North Carolina on down to Florida. But I do indeed have some big-bore alligator-handling equipment, so maybe we'd all wind up with some spiffy new shoes at the end of the run.

Skeeter, that pub crawl sounds epic, like...I dunno, Beowulf in the mead hall or something.

bruce said...

So looks like it's an alligator hunt then:
https://nautitimes.com/