New Favorite Thing To Do

Sunday, July 29, 2007
10:39 PM

• Get to a far off beach via canoe
• Play Bocce ball on said beach once arrived
• Canoe back to car after fun day in the sun

This past week we went up to Jacksonville, NC to visit my brother John, his family, and my mom. It was really good to be around my family and I wish we all lived closer by so we could get together more often. My brother is a Marine and is stationed right there on the NC coast. On Thursday, we headed to the beach on the Marine base and body surfed/boogie boarded the waves for a good 3 hours. It was awesome. I couldn't believe how big the waves were, especially for the east coast. I get the feeling that the waves aren't always like that because later when I told a local about our trip to the beach (we were buying shrimp from the guy) he laughed when I mentioned that the waves were pretty decent. I kind of got the feeling that the military might have "claimed" the best beach in the area for themselves.

Friday morning, Haley and I set out to find a local seafood market. Down in Snead's Ferry, NC, there is a place out in the boonies (yeah, most of NC is probably out in the boonies, but this was really out in the boonies) that has 4-5 local seafood markets. After driving though back roads to finally get to the water, we pulled into the last seafood place we found, Everett's Seafood. The things that surprised me most about the little place:

• Shrimp that cost $3/lb for the smaller ones and $5/lb for the jumbo ones
• The extraordinary niceness of the guys running the place

Later that night, we cooked up a bunch of the shrimp. We ate more shrimp than we should have, but even non-shrimp lovers, Haley and John, were loving it. We looked up a coconut shrimp recipe, and then my mom had requested a Pina Colada dipping sauce from Red Lobster that we were also able to find. We also skewered a ton of shrimp and added some Zataran's Creole Seasoning before putting them on the grill. It was awesome food. The fact that the shrimp had been caught the same day made it taste all the better.

On Saturday, our last day there, we took a couple canoes (including our new one) to Hammock's beach state park. Somehow we were able to fit both canoes on/in our truck to haul down to the ocean. Once there, Haley and I went together in a canoe with Gob and John, Ashley, Mom, and their 7-month old baby Jack were in the other. We had a couple lifejackets and in retrospect Jack probably should have had one of them on. We got some funny looks from other people on the 2.5 mile trail to the beach who were donning lifejackets. Oh well, we all made it. Jack and Ashley ended up riding the ferry back. The last half mile or so of the canoe trail was really shallow water, so we all got out and hiked the canoes in. Gob really liked this part because we let him run free for the most part. He enjoyed terrorizing the millions of small crabs that covered the shore and didn't quite know what to do when they pinched him. After finally docking our canoes, we hiked a short distance over some dunes to reach the open ocean. It was nice because the place where we ended up was pretty much deserted. We ate a quick lunch, got in the water for a while and then played some wicked Bocce Ball right there on the beach. I wasn't sure if it was going to be worth it to carry the Bocce set along the 2.5 mile canoe trek, but once we started playing there in the sand I knew it was. After a couple hours at the beach, we headed back. By this time we were all really tired, including Gob who slept most of the way back.

I don't know if this last day ended up being so enjoyable for me because of the canoeing/beach or because I did it all with family that I love. It was probably the most fun I have had all summer, Pacuare river included.

After getting home, we had to make the trek home because Haley had an engagement she had to be at the next morning. We ended up not leaving town until 8:00pm and with a 5-hour drive ahead of us, I decided to start consuming vast amounts of caffeine early on. Between the 3 cokes, Exedrine (both for caffeine and to tame my sunburn), and energy drink (my first foray into the world of energy drinks) I was pretty hopped up on caffeine. All in all, I think I had about 400+ mg of brain electrifying awakeness going on. After the day at the beach, I needed all the help I could to stay awake. My plan worked and combined with listening to the final Harry Potter on audio book we made it home safely (and wide awake--it took me an hour to get to sleep).