April at the Beach

Lots of folks think the only nice time to be at the beach is after the middle of June.  While it is true that the ocean water is warmer in mid-June, there is a lot to be said for an April beach visit.

One of the nicest things about coming to the beach in April is that there is so much space that you will think that you own the beach.  Most people don't swim in the water anyway, so if you are just looking to relax on the beach,  is April really a good time to visit North Carolina's Crystal Coast.

As it is with much in life, the answer is "It depends."  The only way that you can count on beach weather is to live here and never leave.  Then you will be assured of finding some great weather. You can, however, find some great weather in April along North Carolina Southern Outer Banks which tend to warm up faster than the more famous beaches of Nags Head, Duck, and Manteo.  Still whether or not you beach visit will be a great one does depend on the weather, and that varies from year to year.

April 2011 through April 20 has been a stellar month with mild temperatures and very little rain.  While we have seen our share of wind, it has mostly been wind that could be ignored.  We can have wind here that is very hard to ignore, but so far in April 2011, the wind hasn't kept me off of the beach very much.

So if your April beach trip is somewhat dependent on the short term weather, it means that you might be better off waiting until the last minute to book your trip.  Actually for most of April that will likely work.  Easter weekend which this year is April 23 and 24 might be an exception.  It is late enough in the year to give people some hope of real warmth, so I am guessing that we will have a good crowd especially since we have some eighties in the forecast.  But even if we have a good Easter crowd, it will be nothing like a 4th of July crowd.

On Emerald Isle almost everything stays open all year, so even in early April you can find all the area restaurants and services open.  The only thing missing this year at Easter will be our McDonald's in Cape Carteret. The restaurant is being rebuilt.   There is also a new Dunkin' Donuts being built in Cedar Point, but it won't be done until summer.

An April beach visit often means that you can get a great deal on accommodations even at the last minute, and still have plenty of space on the beach for yourself.  With one or two exceptions, you will likely be able to walk right into most restaurants without a wait.

As of mid-April, the water temperatures are already in the mid-sixties and climbing.  I went surf fishing earlier this week, and standing in the water was not a problem.  I did see some people out in the water, and not all of them were youngster. However,  I figure for the most part that they must be Canadians or New Englanders seeking any hint of ice free water since most locals usually wait until June before they dunk their whole bodies in saltwater.

April weather is certainly nice enough for kayaking on most days as long as the wind hasn't kicked up.  I have already been out a couple of times myself.  So far it has been a little windy for a whole afternoon of fishing from a skiff, but the wind can stop at any time. You can't enjoy those rare moments unless you are here.   I managed to get one short skiff  fishing trip in during March but that has been it so far.  There will be plenty of time for more fishing as the water warms.

So if you want some pure relaxation, fewer crowds, and lots of room on the beach, come visit us in April.  One of the hidden benefits is that in April the weather is so nice that we often sleep with our windows open.  It has been nearly three weeks since our heat pumps have run.

I have been walking the beaches regularly, and I can assure you that they are in fine shape for those beach hikes.

And if you need one more reason, the local strawberries are ripe, and as usual,  they are delicious. Produce is starting to come to the stands, we had new potatoes and local asparagus for dinner on Tuesday night.  There is nothing like fresh produce and some fresh fish with near perfect strawberries for dessert to make you certain that spring is here, and summer is on the horizon.

This is my Emerald Isle Travel Guide to help you plan your trip.  You can find out more about the Southern Outer Banks at my Crystal Coast Life Blog.
Here are some pictures that I took on my most recent hike along the beach.

Learning to take the weather in stride

Most of the US has seen a pretty tough winter with temperatures colder than normal.  Here in Carteret County the rumor is that this was the coldest winter in the last 100 years.  For the most part the rivers did not freeze over, and our one big snow storm of four inches disappeared within hours of arriving without any shoveling.

However, our weather recently has been so nice that it has been easy to forget that we are in spring and that cooler weather is never far away.  Wednesday, March 23, was so nice that a friend and I managed to sneak in an early spring fishing trip.  Earlier in the month, I managed to explore all the new sand over at the Point at Emerald Isle.  A week later, I even managed a much longer walk on the beach.

All of this was accomplished in shorts and temperatures ranging from the upper sixties to the eighties.  It should not surprise anyone that we assumed that spring was here.  Even the plants got into the swing of things.  Our Bradford pear blooms only lasted a week.  The daffodils didn't last but a couple of weeks. Recently we have seen some tulips, wisteria, and even dogwood trees blooming.  I even put my tomato plants in the ground the same day that I went fishing.

The pelicans, great blue herons, and white herons that have been hanging around the water behind our home headed off for bigger waters.  There were a couple of days when the bluebirds were so noisy that I was sure that spring was entrenched here on the Southern Outer Banks.  Even the bait fish in Raymond's Gut which runs out to the White Oak River could hardly stay in the water.  They were swarming around our dock and jumping all over the water as I idled my boat out to the river.  I even wrote a post talking about figuring out the puzzle being near the water in Carteret County.

Mother Nature sent a warning shot across my bow on Thursday night.  I managed to go on my first White Oak River kayaking trip of the 2011 season.  It was late in the day when I left our dock, but the temperatures were in the upper seventies.  By the time I got back only a little over an hour later, the temperature had dropped to the middle fifties, and the water taken on an appearance not nearly so inviting.  The picture at the top of the post was taken about when I figured about that a front had just gone over me and taken away all of my warmth.

Still the next two days weren't so bad.  We managed to get into the upper sixties each day.  Then came Sunday, March 27.   It was a cold day with temperatures in the middle forties when we got out of bed.  They actually drifted downwards during the day to the low forties.  Areas to the north and west of the Crystal Coast haven't even made it into the forties.  Snow has been reported in West Virginia mountains, and the mountains in southwest Virginia and North Carolina are likely to get some snow during the evening of March 27.

It just goes to show you that you cannot count on the weather.  While it appeared spring was with us for good, we now have a slight bump in the road.    We will have to worry about those blooms on the strawberry plants and my tomato plants.    The cold temperatures stretch well into South Carolina and Georgia so we are not alone.  However, that is not much comfort.  I was hoping for another long beach walk this weekend, but it will have to wait.

It appears that we will be back in the fifties and sixties by the end of the March.  I guess we will have to dream a while about the return of those eighties.  That is not a problem.  This time of year I am used to dreaming about summer days.

Oh well it is nice to see our great blue heron buddy back behind the house for a last visit before spring.

Close to the weather and even closer to reality

It is something of a local sport listening to weather reports and guessing how long it will take them to catch up with the reality of the local weather.

Living along the coast in the middle of a string of small towns is a lot different than living in a compact urban area under the microscope of a number of weathermen.  Urban areas like Northern Virgina, Washington, and Baltimore are only a fraction the size of the coastal area that our weathermen deal with when trying to come up with a forecast.

Carteret County would be about half the area of the combined Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area.  The problem is that the weathermen looking after our area cover about fifteen counties of which we are only one.  Our closest weatherman is three counties away and pretty far inland.

On top of that our weather changes radically depending on where you are in relation to the water.  Then there is the little fact that weather systems can form or intensify off our coast.  So how many times have you heard the phrase "a low will form off the North Carolina coast?"  That would be our area.

Friday morning, February 11, we got a second dose of seeing how difficult it is to come with an accurate forecast in an area as complex and large as coastal North Carolina.

When we listed to the forecast on Thursday night at 11 PM, we were told to expect a few morning showers followed by clearing in the afternoon with a high temperature of around 50F.

Friday morning we even heard the same forecast which was strange since I awoke to blue skies.  Unfortunately the blue skies did not last very long.  Before nine AM, we were seeing rain showers which not only did not stop but continued until almost ten PM Friday.  On top of that our temperatures never got out of the upper thirties much less to 50F.

I would class that as a miss almost as big as our last "snow storm" when we were supposed to get maybe an inch, and we ended up with four to seven inches of snow.

Of course I don't blame the weathermen, it is just difficult to try to guess the weather in a large complex area intermingled with so much water.  All it takes is a system moving two or three miles closer to the coast, and our weather is totally different than the weather just a few miles inland.

What happens is that residents stay close to the weather forecasts, but they also have to use some common sense.  It you see a line of storms on the horizon, you pay attention to them even if there are no storms in the forecast.

It is not a bad way to live, much of what we hear and see on the television and Internet could use a little more fact checking just like we give our weather forecasts.

Coastal NC, An Interesting Mix of Old and New

I recently ran into a tide table dated 1969.  It came from a restaurant in Morehead City.  It is likely that my uncle Austin and I picked it up on a fishing trip that summer nearly forty two years ago.

In those days what is now called the Southern Outer Banks or the Crystal Coast was a pretty undeveloped place.  We drove across the bridge at Morehead City and eventually cut over to the beach when the roads disappeared.  We managed to drive down to the Point at the end of Emerald Isle.

The Point is a much different place today.  The area is filled with homes, Coast Guard Road, and in the summer, a fair number of people.  I made a recent visit to the Point to take a picture of snow on the beach and gather material for a post on the colder than normal winter that we have endured this winter of 2010-11.

The previous Saturday a snowstorm had come about as close as you can get to snowing us in down here on the coast.  It brought back some memories of years and blizzards in Canada, and even got me to decide that just maybe being snowed in isn't so bad even on the North Carolina coast.

Having a day to contemplate things and fix our computer network gave me a chance to contemplate what an interesting mix of life we have along the North Carolina's beaches.

One the one hand, ancient birds like pelicans are our everyday neighbors.  We live in area rich with wildlife.  Just today, I have enjoyed herons, pelicans, and hooded merganser ducks, and I have not even walked more than 100 yards from my house.  There was also a grey fox that I caught sight of this morning.  Having 158,000 acres of the Croatan National Forest on one side and the fifty-six miles of the Cape Lookout National Seashore does not hurt.

Yesterday as I took my afternoon hike, I had to marvel that I was recording my hike with my Android based Droid phone.  After I got back I was able to send the GPS track of my hike to my Google maps.

Having 3G phone service here on the edge of the continent is not that amazing given the reach of technology these days.  Of course 3G service doesn't come in a lot of flavors down here.  If you are an iPhone lover, you might be out of luck.  However, Verizon does do a good job here so I guess you could switch carriers if you just cannot live without your iPhone.

Several years ago I wrote a post about the Instant Economy  and how easy it is easy to find the services needed to start a business.  I was living in Roanoke, VA at the time, and it is a much more populated area than the Southern Outer Banks.

After being down here over four years, I cannot see much difference between the technology I find on the Crystal Coast and what I find in Roanoke.  It might be easier to get a Macintosh computer repaired in Roanoke, but that is about the only thing that I can see.

In fact my cable modem service provider is a little more reliable here on the coast.  Where our home is in Roanoke, it is still impossible to get Internet phone service through the cable provider. We can do that here on the coast and save a few dollars by bundling television, Internet access, and telephone services.
 
Winds, storms, and water have a huge impact on our life here at the coast.  We are close to the land and sea.  We pay attention to the weather, but at the same time, we have all the conveniences of modern society like grocery stores, shopping malls, restaurants, health care services, good schools, and very good roads.

In fact you might say that we get the best of both worlds.  Our services and stores end up being over built to handle the short influx of visitors that we have during the summer tourist season.  In the winter, late fall, and much of the spring, we are here by ourselves.  Our stores and roads are uncrowded, and everything moves to a slower pace.  It is not a bad way to live. 

We have almost the best of the Internet world in a place where there are still farmers' markets along the roads, and you can still buy local fish fresh off the boasts.  It is a little like a wired paradise.

We enjoy the visitors in the summer. They bring some hustle and bustle to a normally very quiet area. Other than crowding the grocery stores some on the weekends, there are almost no challenges that come from our summer visitors.  We are blessed with a tourist area made up almost exclusively of single family homes.  While there are a few condo complexes sprinkled around, the density of housing for our summer visitors is very low, so we just don't get the crowds that other places have.

It does not hurt that we also have four lane roads coming at the area from two different ends, and that we have the Northern Outer Banks to handle many of the tourists who often have never even heard of our area.  Myrtle Beach also helps us by drawing off the golfers, and Wilmington picks up many of the day trippers.  We have our own little niche, and in this case it is not so bad to be a niche player.

So while many of us feel very close to the sea and the creatures that swim in it and fly over it, it is very possible to be a person immersed in technology here.  You can twitter and post to Facebook just as easily as you can in more urban areas.  You might even be more likely to actually know the people online than you would be in a city.  While you might not have access to Verizon FIOS, you can probably survive quite well on the technology that you find here on the Southern Outer Banks.

Few people may have heard of Foursquare, but you might find it easier to get to know a real mayor.  In fact if you come down and buy a beach house from me, I will make it a point to introduce you to the mayor of Emerald Isle.   He is a very nice guy and much more accessible than your average mayor.

I have not seen any limitations that come from living in this beautiful area.  That is one of the reasons that I am proud to help people find homes in this special spot.  It is a beautiful area, and I am excited to wake up here every morning.  You just never know what you might find in the Gut behind our home.

You might even get to do some heron noodling.

Winter Storm on the Horizon at the Beach

Here it is the heart of winter.  We are supposed to be seeing January average temperatures in the mid-fifties with lows in the mid-thirties.

January 2011 is not turning out that way.  We started warm, and it brought some crowds to the beach, but we are going to have to wait until the middle of the month for our next nice weather.  We are lucky in that there are four days supposedly on tap in the mid-sixties.

Four warm days could definitely put a dent in winter, but first we have to get through the impending winter storm.

Winter storms are serious things even at the beach.  If we are lucky we will just get some cold rain and winds.  We could get sleet and freezing rain. With freezing rain comes the danger of power outages.

Of course you don't have to live at the beach to face the threat of power outages because of freezing rain.  If I had to bet on those places facing the most impact from freeing rain in this next storm, I would guess a few miles inland all the way to Greensboro and maybe even in to South Carolina.

Looking at this storm in particular, the Greensboro to Raleigh area might be the sweet spot.  I have faced plenty of iced up roads in Virginia and Atlantic Canada. Ice in my opinion is never nice.  I even have some chains for my feet.  They are indispensable when things get really icy on the mountain. Unfortunately they won't me any good hanging in the garage in Virginia.

I doubt that we will not face a situation like the one depicted in the linked pictures. While ice is bad in the flat country of coastal Carolina, it can be deadly in the mountains.  Anyone can go up an icy hill, only someone with a divine guiding hand can make it down safely.  I am thankful for the absence of hills and mountains in Coastal NC.

Actually I don't even have a snow shovel down here at the beach.  Going into our fifth winter, I have yet to see the need for a snow shovel.  I hope it stays that way.

While we had good crowds a week ago, yesterday things were quiet almost everywhere including the beach and sound.  A little more of this winter weather, and we will have to kick off our annual visits to the museums of the area.

We are about to run out of football to watch, but fortunately the warm Carolina sun should start making itself known fairly soon.  Then we can start thinking about gardening and boating.  I have to get my tomato plans started very soon.

The first of the week January storm is going to bring us a taste of winter, but as usual I suspect we will come through it in fine shape.  I have not heard any predictions of damaging winds or surf.

I can't wait until there are people on the beach once again.

Winter at the Beach

While winter is not the most desirable time to visit the beach, there are still things to do and beautiful scenery to enjoy.  Sometimes finding a good day for a beach walk becomes something of  a challenge, but there are times that Mother Nature will smile upon you.

You can luck into some great winter beach weather.  The winter of 2008, I kept track of temperatures during the month of January.  We only had 19 hours below freezing for the whole month, and we managed 11 days when we hit 70 degrees or better.

While I did not keep track during January 2010, I know it was much colder. Every year has it cold spells and warm times on the beach.  The temperature reached 75F on February 9, 2009. It prompted me to write an article about the great weather.

That day was just a couple weeks after a late January dusting of snow along the beach.  Winter time at the beach is actually a huge war between warm and cold air masses. You never quite know which one is going to win.

While in the late fall, we often have the benefit of warm waters to protect us from the cold.  By the middle of December, our area waters are cooling off just at the time Canadian air masses often invade the US.

This year, the whole east coast has endured early cold weather that is much colder than normal.  Normal December temperatures for the Crystal Coast in December are 58F for the high and 35F for the low.  The first week of December 2010 we saw a couple of days when our high temperature barely made it to 35F.

We have seen a year when we did not have a day when the high temperature was lower than 40F.

Considering parts of Maritime Canada were higher than ours last week, the weather the first week of December was a little upside down.

We have not let the cold weather get us down.  With a gas fireplace, it takes only a few minutes to warm up a home to the point of it being very toasty.  The cold weather is always a great time to get a bowl of stuffed pepper soup from Mike's on the Island or some of the delicious chowder at Nicky's of Swansboro.  One day last week, we had a great bowl of vegetable beef soup from Yana Mama's in Swansboro.

Even during this most recent period of cold weather, we have had plenty of sunshine.  With the power of the Carolina sun, all you have to do is find a spot out of the wind, and you will likely find some heat.

Even this week, I managed to stop at one of the many beach accesses and take a few pictures of the waves to go along with the ones that I had of the icy gut behind our home .

I had planned to do more than take pictures this weekend, but rain fell all day Saturday, December 11, and we are supposed to have showers all day Sunday.  Our Sunday temperature of 61F likely would normally tempt me to run down the river in my boat, but a boat ride in the rain at 61F is not very appealing even at the beach.

Still there are things to do besides boat rides. This is a great time of year to watch some of the birds.  Today we had a great blue heron fishing in the gut behind our house.  He was very successful.  I think he managed four fish in just a couple of minutes.  When the rain stops, and we get some warmer days, it will be a great time to hit area trails.

People often fail to consider some of the wonderful indoor activities that are always available here along the Southern Outer Banks.  Three of the most popular are the Maritime Museum at Beaufort, the Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores, and the Core Sound Museum on Harkers' Island.

So while it might not be a great time for a beach walk, a boat ride, or some fishing, winter is still not a bad time to visit the beach.  There is plenty of easily accessible scenery.  Most of our businesses and restaurants are still open, and you certainly won't have to wait in line.  Even our department stores are not as crowded as you would find in a large city.  We recently had visitors who did much of their Christmas shopping in Morehead City.

When you come to the beach in the winter, there is no question the weather is a gamble, but it is highly unlikely that you will run into a blizzard, and you might just luck into one of those 75F days.  A few of those and winter seems a lot shorter.

Standing Tall in Adversity

Even the most fortunate of us go through some tough times.  Sometimes it seems like you cannot win for losing.  Yet it is in those most challenging moments that we actually find out who we are.

My wife and I are very fortunate, but since my exit from Apple in 2004, I have worked far harder for less money than I ever have.  I feel no bitterness for having to work hard.  I actually feel great pride in my ability to work long hours.  I am proud deliver creative work that makes a positive contribution to the world.

My first career after college was that of cattleman selling purebred bulls and cattle to others raising cattle.  I long ago learned that your reputation was worth far more than any quick sale.  I have never tried to trick anyone into a sale.  I have always prided myself in walking away from potential business if the business would not be a good thing for both parties.

Over the years of selling farm equipment, computers, email services, ultra high speed networking, and real estate, I have seen no reason to change the way that I do business.

I try to help people achieve their needs.  If you have people's best interests at the forefront of your mind, then you really do not have to worry about having enough business.  People will find you eventually even in tough times like today's real estate downturn.

We recently had clients who commented that I was unlike any real estate agent they had ever worked with in their lives.  They were surprised that I did not try to pressure them to buy a particular property.  They were very pleased that I tried to present all their options objectively and without bias.

That is the way I operate, but there are plenty of others who treat people just like I do.

I sometimes feel sad that people distrust sales people.  When I am trying to buy something, there is nothing that I would rather have than a really good sales person who knows their product inside and out.

The last four years have been very tough for real estate agents.  Even the well established agents have felt the pressure.  I have found that getting a real estate career going during a down period in an area where you know few people is almost an impossible challenge.  However, I have never let the near impossibility of it stop me from trying or from doing an outstanding job.

I have managed a few real estate sales in each of first few years, but I also supplemented my income by writing a blog for a real estate company.  I had to be very careful to not draw clients to me personally.  The pay that I received was about what I needed to cover my real estate expenses.

This summer the company made the decision to discontinue the blog.  It was an immediate loss of income to us, and a fatal shot for my real estate career.  However, I made the decision to buckle down and work even harder.

I had been working extremely hard to deliver Internet traffic to the company.  I had links from all of my many websites flowing to my company.  When they gave up on my blog, I pulled all the links and focused them on delivering traffic to me.

Three months after seeing the blog cut, I am getting more leads than I ever got when I was writing the blog for the company.  I have resurrected the blog on my own site, and I finally feel like I am on the way to building some momentum in real estate.  Unfortunately real estate is still a career where financial success looks to be too far away.

So perhaps the fatal blow has turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me.  I could have moaned and complained,  but I just refused to let the bad news pull me down.  I have worked harder than ever, and the web results that I am seeing have convinced me that I have talents which can make be successful once again.

With that in mind I will wind down my real estate career within the next year.  It is the right move for me.  It will take time, but I will get to that next success.

I think it was Dennis Waitley, a famous motivational speaker, who once said, "Bad news is opportunity riding a dangerous wind."

I have taken the position that I am responsible for my own success or failure.  It will be my efforts that lift us back to success.

It helps to be living in a wonderful place like the Southern Outer Banks where the weather and the people make life much more enjoyable than it would be in a big city.  I can draw strength from my natural surroundings and the people around me.

A bad day never seems as bad after a boat ride on the river or a walk on the beach.

Firmly believing that who you are is much more important than what you are or how much stuff you have will pave our road to success.