There is in this blog another post with a very similar opening photo to this one. In that post, we introduced our readers to Walker, who lives with our friends Hope and Carlos in Beaufort, NC. But the photo above is recent, and Walker is almost five years older here than in the previous photo, and don’t we all wish we could have aged as well as he!
This visit was somewhat more premeditated, a little bit better planned on our part (but not much better, to be honest), and of a more satisfying length than the last one. We’d decided to see if we could incorporate the Outer Banks of NC into the northbound leg of this trip, and they start off the coast of Beaufort. Previous attempts to visit the OBX had failed because it turns out hurricane season is a bad time to go there (who’d have thought?) but late spring is pretty good. Anyway, we got in touch with Hope and Carlos and they said to come on over, and we did.
You may remember that Carlos and Hope had a band called the Beaufort Blues Project. Well, the band was on hiatus when the pandemic came in, so there’s been a break in the action and they’re now about ready for some new musical adventures with some new tunes and a new name. We didn’t do any jamming this time – instead we did a lot more chatting and catching up, and we had time for a little more tourist-y stuff. Highlights were the Beaufort Farmers Market, the North Carolina Maritime Museum (especially a fascinating exhibit about the pirate Blackbeard and artifacts from his ship the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the wreckage of which is just offshore from Beaufort), and our first post-Covid restaurant visits (including a slice of Vinegar Pie).
We got a lot of good advice from Hope and Carlos about the Outer Banks, and when we realized we’d kind of botched our ferry reservation they let us hang around for an extra day, which I hope they enjoyed as much as we did.
A few more pix here.
It’s so good to see Hope and Carlos again. So glad you had the time and opportunity to get together.