Bucket List - Kinda

Traveling to new and exotic places is on the list,
but a trip to the Outer Banks isn't really new since I've been coming here for over 30 years.
Also, exotic isn't a word I would use to describe this area.
Of course, if I had never been here before, it would be exotic, fer sure.

I came down here to deliver some Christmas gifts to friends and family.

First stop was my father in Kitty Hawk.
I know I have posted pictures of the view out his back door before,
but one can never have too much pretty scenery.




These next 2 pictures are of the pond across the street from his house.
Ooh, pretty.
The water was glassy smooth, and it made the water look so mirrored,
I couldn't resist the Kodak momemt.
I like things that look shiny.



After breakfast, we took a little road trip up the beach to Corolla.

First stop, the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education.



This is a new museum, relatively small, but very interesting... and FREE!
And they show a movie. Any museum that shows a movie is OK in my book.
Also, the ladies' room was very nice - clean and spacious.
Simple minds are pleased by simple things.

A couple of interesting tidbits from the museum about the Currituck Sound...



If you click on the picture, it will make it bigger & you can read the lesson.

Next, we walked over the (almost) 100 year-old footbridge....

....to the Whalehead Club, formerly the Corolla Island Hunt Club,
that has been fully restored to it's former glory.
It was vacant for many years and had deteriorated badly.

Pop told me that about 30 years ago, when it was still abandoned and ramshackle,
he snuck in there and played the Steinway piano that was custom made for the original owners.
It was understandably sorely in need of tuning (duh!), but he got a rush out of it.
The curator told us that when they went to move it for restoration, the legs fell off.
I'm sure that was from Pop playing it. Yeah, that's it.

I remember it from then.
We first started coming to the Outer Banks about 35 years ago,
and the first time we drove up the sand track to Corolla,
we saw it back there in the marsh, crumbling.
I'm so glad it has been restored.
I hate to see history erode away
(or knocked down so we have the pleasure(?) of a new strip mall).




Aside - click on the picture to make it larger and look at the emblem on the back of Pop's jacket.
It's not there just for show. It's also got his name embroidered on the front.
It's his. He earned it.
Now you see why I sheepishly admit that he can still run circles around me.
Although, he did disclose that the arthritis in his hip is becoming a problem.

It is amazing that, back in 1925, when the club was built
(out in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere),
they installed unheard of luxuries like an elevator,
numerous bathrooms with hot & cold running water and flush toilets and tubs and sinks,
and a full basement (in an area where the water table is 5 feet down).

Most of the house - half of the 1st & 2nd floors, the entire 3rd floor,
the entire basement, and the attic - were devoted to servants quarters & activities.
And the thing I liked the best were all the closets, some big & some small,
that were tucked in everywhere you turned.
I llllove closets. Probably because I have so few of them in my house.

The grounds were full of a common sight on the OBX, live oak trees.


Anyway, we wanted, or I should say I wanted, to climb the lighthouse.
Pop with the arthritis and just the teeniest bit of fear of heights.
The views from the top are spectacular,
but the Currituck Beach Lighthouse was closed for the winter.

Bummer. It was a perfect day for looking - crystal blue cloudless skies.
Trust me, I've been up there. Words can't describe.
But I will go back on a sunny spring day and take some pictures.
All the pictures I took up there before were on a regular camera,
and it is too much for my feeble brain to try to transfer the negatives to digital
(or whatever the hell you do with them).

That evening, I meandered my way to my friend Rosie's house (on Colington Island)
to spend the next day with her and her dear husband Mr. Hawthorne.
We met on the internet, since we are apparently both stalkers,
but that is another story for another day.
If you really want to know, Rosie is telling the story on her blog even as I type this.

Here she is hiding behind her new friend Bjorn at the store.


I believe I have mentioned that Rosie is an outstanding cook,
and she presented me with about a a jillion of her Christmas cookies...


She also made homemade croissants for our breakfast the next morning.
Unfortunately, the place she had them rising was a little too warm,
and a lot of the butter oozed out of their doughy coils.
She blasphemed them, but I thought they were delicious -
buttery, flaky, buttery, yeasty, buttery, and they left a buttery sheen on my fingers.
I didn't care that they were flat as a pancake.

Split in half and filled with bacon & scrambled eggs, they were delicious.
Everything Rosie makes is faaaaaabulous.
And she put 2 of them in my cookie box. Yay!
1 for me and 1 for BS.... or.... maybe.... 2 for me!

Then Rosie bitched at me for leaving buttery fingerprints on her computer keyboard.
Tough. Butter is one of the foods of the gods.

Oh yeah, there were also warm sticky buns.


I sure like going to visit them. Duh!

That night, as we were channel surfing, we came across these listings:


There they were, 24 hours a day (according to the channel guide)

We spent all evening thinking up adjectives and alliterations for what we saw on the guide.
Here's what we came up with, shamelessly stolen from her blog:

"Apparently, there is a cocky cornucopia of carnality -
nay - a virtual plethora of porn -
a fertile, fetid field of fecundity,
a slippery smorgasbord of smut -
a library of libidinous lasciviousness -
a buffet of boisterous beastiality -
an eyeful of erogenous erotica -

on the upper channels."

She was so thankful that I taught her how to find the porn on her TV.

And finally, here is Rosie's dog, Dixie, in a typical pose for her. Heh.

mmm