Coastal NC Blog

Now this is the kind of weather I have been waiting to enjoy. It was actually a little warm when I went to get the newspaper this morning. I know it was in the mid-sixties even over near the beaches.

I had a great day. I wrote a little this morning, had a relaxing lunch, and did some email correspondence. Then I went to the office and worked for an hour or so getting familiar with some MLS listings before coming home for a great bike ride. It was even warm enough to switch to shorts. Lots of people were outside working.

There were also plenty of daffodils blooming and none of them were falling over from dampness like they often are early in the spring in the mountains. The other great news is that I saw same bait fish in the channel behind our house. When I did a little casting after coming back from my bike ride, the small fish even boiled the surface around a plastic bait.

It's nice to see something alive in the water besides a heron, pelican, or duck. The sighting of bait fish means that there is hope for some real fish in the not so distant future. I guess I better start thinking about that boat.

After my fishing expedition, I decided to go take some pictures of the sunset. I gambled that the light would be right from the ramp in Emerald Isle Woods Park. As you can see from the photo, it was a pretty good gamble.

I posted a few of the shots that I took on both Flickr and Picasa Web Albums. Someone even piped in as I was posting and asked me the location of this photo. I also tagged it on a map in Flickr so people could see where the photo was taken. You can go to this link and click on the map link to right of the photo to see for yourself.

Bogue Sound can certainly do a wonderful job with a sunset. When I got back to my truck, there was an Emerald Isle Policeman parked behind it. He told me that he was getting ready to close the park down for the night. Fortunately I escaped before the gates were locked.

I grabbed some takeout Chinese at Golden China and enjoyed a feast at home. It seemed appropriate to have food from Golden China to go with the golden sunset.

Though the weather seems to be reluctant to get warm, we cannot complain very much. The Washington, DC area had snow as I noted in a post I did on my View from the Mountain blog. Other areas are also still experiencing lots of really cold weather. It looks like we can expect some nice seventy degree temperatures early next week. With that in the near future, I'm not going to complain about some temperatures in the fifties since the snow isn't that far from us.

The local papers have articles about the planning process for the growth along the White Oak River basin. We know the growth is happening. I live in Bluewater Cove which is one of those new subdivisions along the White Oak. There are plenty more planned which as a Realtor® I believe are important to the economic health of Carteret County.

Still it is very important that we all work to not only keep more damage from happening to the White Oak but to also repair it the best we can. It's too beautiful a spot to let it be ruined by growth which doesn't factor in the health of the river. Te

I have been in the mountains for a few days and welcomed the coastal warmth today. While today might have seemed cool, all I can say is that you should have been in Roanoke, Va. on Sunday, March 4, 2007. The high temperature was 38 degrees Fahrenheit with wind gusts between 15 and 33 miles per hour. That translates to a very cool day with some snow flurries. You can almost feel the cold from this picture I took the next day. If that doesn't make you feel cold then this shot of snow showers across the Roanoke valley the morning of the fourth will probably do the trick.

Still it did get over fifty degrees Fahrenheit in Cape Carteret today so it was pleasant enough for me to make several casts from the dock behind the house. My left arm was a little sore so I considered it therapy. I was very surprised to see the fishing kayak paddle into the channel behind the house at not much before five pm. I asked the angler if he had done any better than I did a little earlier. His comment was that he suspected all the fish were home by the fire. Given how the temperature was dropping at that time of day, I suspect our kayaking fisherman wished he were there by the fire himself. I know it was cool enough this evening to turn the gas logs on for a while.

If fishermen are starting to flail the water, can warmer weather be very distant?