I decided to fool around with Scrapblog today, and used my beach trip photos as material. It's pretty fun, and I'll use it again sometime. Scrapblog below:

We got to the beach house at Emerald Isle, and the view from the house was spectacular. The water was as warm as a bath, and there was a nice breeze almost the entire time I was there. I wish I still were there. I must remember to make myself go to the beach every year - I love it so much. I was entirely incapable of editing and pruning what was in the Flickr stream, so I guess you'll just have to look at some extra beach scenes below:


Click for the Flickr yaddah yaddah.

Thank you *SO MUCH* to my long-time family friend Ann and her daughter Emma for inviting us - I had a wonderful time.

Mom and I had some time to kill before being able to check into the beach house on Emerald Isle, so we ate lunch at Finz Grill in Beaufort and then stopped by the N. C. Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores for a bit. The aquarium had been renovated quite a bit since my last visit, and I enjoyed their displays on local species of fish, reptiles, and jellyfish. The sharks creeped me out a fair bit, but the loggerhead turtles were really fascinating and highly interactive. The indoor shots didn't take at all, but I got some very pretty shots of the salt marsh that you can go out on. There were lots of fiddler crabs, egrets, and even some far-off pelicans to be seen.


Click on the photo for the Flickr stream, as usual

I love the historic homes around Beaufort. So I took a bazillion pictures of them. Be thankful that I have pruned the following collection to homes/shots that someone aside from me might find interesting:


Click on the picture for the whole set, as usual.

The Beaufort Historic Society has done an awesome job with restoring some of these buildings for touring purposes. I went on a couple of tours a few years ago, and they are well worth doing if you're ever in the area.

I spent most of the day wandering around town taking a huge number of photographs. I've decided to separate them into two categories: the town and water, and historic homes. Here's part 1:


Click on the picture for the whole set, as usual.

I got more sun in the hour I spent at 2:00 pm wandering around town taking photos than the rest of the weekend put together, mainly because I was too busy enjoying myself to think about sunscreen.

Mom arrived after that and we got some food at Clawson's Restaurant, which is an old favorite of ours. After that, Mom felt ill for the rest of the night - the 8.5 hour drive was too hard on her system - she's still delicate from her last surgery. I ended up leaving her at the B&B and going around taking more photos by myself. I eventually went to Finz Grill for a couple of beers before turning in for the night.

Here I am in Beaufort, NC - a town that's very close to my heart. I got here in about 3 hours time, which was lucky - I seemed to hit the highway at the right time to avoid the Friday afternoon rush. I wandered around town in the hot sun for an hour or so before Mom arrived from Maryland. So I had a bit of time to indulge my love for the historic homes of the area. Ostensibly this is research for my novel, which is set in Beaufort around the Revolutionary War era, with a sequel planned for the Civil War period. In actuality, it probably won't lead anywhere.

In any case, I took 160 photos. I'll have to streamline those a good bit before they will be Flickr-worthy. So here are a couple of preview shots in the meantime.

First, this is the Beaufort Inlet, as seen from a dock off of Front Street. This is the same inlet where Blackbeard's ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, is supposed to have sunk, and where there is a candidate wreck which may actually be his ship.



This is the bed and breakfast we stayed at, the Anchorage House. It was pretty decent, and very close to Front Street, which was nice. The beds were comfortable.