Another Beautiful Sunset

Notice that there is no snow in the photo! We do, however, have to put up with a lot of sand!

Today was spent unpacking, grocery shopping and napping.

Vacation 2009 Has Begun

We arrived at Emerald Isle safe and sound this afternoon to enjoy sunny skies and 60 degree temps. Learning that Rochester, NY was being blasted by another snow storm made the 60 degrees all that more enjoyable. It is suppose to cool off tomorrow but there is no snow in the forecast for here.

Happy New Year All! It will be a quiet one here except the pounding surf. For some reason, 8 hours in the car doing absolutely nothing is very exhausting and I doubt either of us will see the new year pour in. Check back often and hopefully there will be a more interesting post.

P.S.

We made it home safe and sound, but are not particularly happy about the 15 inches of snow on the ground. In typical Rochester-fashion, it has snowed at least a trace on 21 of the last 22 days. Yuck!

On a more pleasant note, we got an e-mail from Joe and Kitty (see Jan 7 post) and little Griffin Lee Christodoulou was born January 26. He weighed 6 lbs, 2 ounces and was 20 inches long.

Boo Hoo

We are packing up and hitting the road this morning. Not easy. It's been the best vacation ever.

The high today will be in the 60's and there is a gentle ocean breeze.....okay, it's not so gentle, maybe 20 to 30 mph, but it is a warm breeze. There is a gentle breeze in Rochester, NY as well but it is only 25 degrees and that gentle breeze is called wind chill.

Thanks for following our vacation blog and all the comments and e-mails. We'll see everyone soon back in the Snowbelt!

Love, Jim and Mary

Back to Southport

It was another wonderful day in Paradise and so we decided to do a return trip to Southport. It is such a quaint, little town that we wanted to share it with Geoff and Mary.

And we got back to the beach just in time for another beautiful sunset.

Dinner Party

John invited us all over for dinner last night and give us a quick cooking lesson on how to make his seafood salad. It was delectable and a good time was had by all!

Shore Birds

The result of spending way too much time on the beach.

Fritters

We introduced Geoff and Mary to fritters this morning for breakfast. Fritters are pieces of fruit dipped in pan cake batter and deep fried. The are served with powder sugar and whipped cream. We figure that since they have fresh fruit, the must be good for us.

One of the Many Things We Will Miss About North Carolina

My Good Luck Charm!

Geoff and Mary Williams arrived from Rochester today. Geoff and Jim ran off to the golf course and Mary and I walked the beach. I guess Mary was a good luck charm because I found the very best sea shells of the trip today!

Rainy Day

One of the joys of being down here for a full month is to experience the many moods of the ocean. When we first got here, there were a couple of stormy days, complete with a tornado watch, and the the sea was explosive. We've also had many calm days where the ocean was like a huge pond, except for a little ripple wave at the shore line. During the calm weather, you can lay in bed at night and count the waves, one....................two....................three. Yesterday was stormy but there was no wind. There was no counting the waves because the crashing surf was constant. And we saw our first surfers. They were in wet suits (high temp was only 50) but were surfing all afternoon.

It rained on and off yesterday so we spent a quiet day going through the hundreds of photos taken since we left NY and we put together this slide show. Hope you enjoy it.

Another Unbelievable Sunset

We got home from Southport just in time to witness another unbelievable sunset! Even Tasha couldn't take her eyes off it.