Glamping Days

Drove from the Richmond area back home today. Got the trailer tucked away in the storage yard & emptied the fridge. The rest of the prep for my next trip will wait a few days.  The best part of the last 4 months was visiting with family & friends. Seeing some new parts of this great country was a huge bonus.  While I enjoyed almost every minute of my trip, it is good to be home. There are piles of mail to get through, friends to catch up with, & some business to attend to over the next 6 weeks.  It was almost 80* when I got home, the grass is that beautiful spring green, & the daffodils are in full bloom. The ability to travel is a real blessing, & having a great home (which includes friends, neighbors, & this lovely community) is an even greater blessing. Won't post again here until my next trip, which will launch on Memorial Day weekend. Thanks for reading. Catch you again in late May.

Spent most of today with a couple of cousins in the Richmond, VA, area. Best part was catching up with them, but the eclipse, 83% here, was very cool as well. No pics as the eclipse wasn't very photogenic. 

Drove northward today to Pocahontas State Park outside of Richmond, VA - an uneventful drive. Sunny with a high of 68 made for a perfect day.   It's still early spring here as this pic of a trail in the park shows.   

Drove up to Corolla today to wander around our old stomping grounds.   On the way, I saw this fella, a tribute to the name "Nags Head". The online Britanica entry for Nags Head explains the name: " It was so named, according to  legend , because unscrupulous ship-wreckers tied lanterns to the necks of ponies (“nags”) and marched them along the high dunes to simulate the lights of boats at anchor—a ruse that tricked captains into running their ships aground on the shoals, where their cargo was seized."   In Corolla, spring is springing at the lighthouse.                                          Back at the campground, my neighbor has a beautifully restored 1970s Trillium. ...and, the obligatory sunset pics...

Snagged a T-shirt from my favorite grocery store. It's the same shirt; not sure why the front & back photographed different colors.                                   It was a glorious day on the beach today - not sunbathing & swimming weather, but my kind of beach day. Folks were out fishing, flying a kite, walking, & building a sand castle. The beach here at Oregon Inlet is quite wide.   Beautiful sunset, lousy picture. 

 Found these 2 fellas on the pier... ...people on the cool windy beach...  ...sunshine over at Bodie Island Lighthouse... ...& a lovely sunset back at the campground (Oregon Inlet in Cape Hatteras National Seashore).

Drove from Raleigh to Oregon Inlet, just south of Nags Head, on the Outer Banks. Will camp here in the National Seashore for 4 nights. It's rather strange to be here with no work to do. My campsite is right off the beach just behind the dunes. Quite windy but warm here this evening, with temps dropping tonight & through tomorrow.  

Spent a beautiful day with my cousins near Raleigh, including a lovely outing on their boat. He added a tail to their cat sculpture, she grows beautiful irises, & their daughter made this fun funky cookie jar when she was young.   

My sweet cousin arranged for us to take a wonderful walking tour of Charleston.                                                                     After a big fire in the early years of Charleston, it became illegal to have a kitchen inside of a house. The red brick section of the house below is the kitchen & slave quarters for the main gray section of the house in front. The pic on the right shows a wall built around the branch of a live oak tree.