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An Empty Beach is So Peaceful, Especially in North Carolina

May 14, 2008 – 8:36 am

This is just one of probably 5,000 images I have of an empty beach. People often tell me they can’t find any beaches without big crowds anymore, especially here in the continental U.S., but I beg to differ. More often than not, Deborah and I find ourselves on a beach with less than 10 people in a 5 square mile area. This beach is one of our favorites. In North Carolina you can go to the Outer Banks and find empty beach after beach.

Of course one of the keys to finding an empty beach is going when everyone else doesn’t want to go. This may sound stupid, but if you want to get a tan and lay in the sun, then go where everyone else is going. If you are interested in walking on a place like the photo below, go in the off season, it is great. So far, we have been able to find empty beaches in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and some incredible ones in Alabama.

They are certainly nice places still left, you just have to look. This is one of our favorites spots, and it is usually empty all year long with white sand and no trash. It is COLD in the winter winds, but still a great place to spend an afternoon, and today, it is the image of the day.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Photography | Also tagged image of the day, north carolina | Comments (1)

Flipper’s Restaurant Opens and Six Miles of Seperation

April 26, 2008 – 6:18 pm

Saturday, April 26, 2008

All the bad weather stayed well north of us today and left us with the most beautiful Saturday we could have asked for. Partly cloudy, 82° with a slight breeze, and enough humidity to remind us we were actually on the coast. Probably the nicest weather we have had since Deborah and I started coming down here more than a year ago.

We had breakfast at one of our favorite morning diners, Waffle House, then went over to a local public beach access point so I could get in a good walk on the beach. I was going to walk to where I knew the beach was blocked by a pier construction, then walk back. The pier was about 4 miles away, with a nice state park beach about 2 miles from my starting location.

Walking is Great Exercise

I have walked on this beach many times before, and sometimes it can be a fast walk, sometimes, very slow. It depends on the tide and how deep you sink into the sand. Today it was a slow walk that really works the legs, especially since I was walking in my jeans for some dumb reason.

$coldplay is what\'s on my ipod$

I walked the 4 miles to the pier, then back 2 miles to the state park pavilion and decided I had had enough at 6 miles. I text Deborah who was happily knitting at my starting point and she came and picked me up. It was a 6 miles walk that felt like 10, but it was good exercise and I enjoyed it very much. Nothing relaxes the mind like a beach, a walk, and an iPod.

Flipper’s is Now Opened

A new restaurant opened that we were hoping would be good, since it is right near the boat. It has been several other establishments prior to Flipper’s but it opened yesterday and today lunch was good. I had a grilled Mahi Mahi sandwich with sweet potato fries, both of which were GREAT. Deborah is going to try out their hamburger for dinner. Hard to mess up one of those but we have been to many places that did.

Nature in View

Today with the walk on the beach I had an hawk or eagle fly over head, dive in the water and catch a fish with its talons. It flew within about 50 feet of me, I could almost see what kind of fish the bird caught. He flew off across the beach, road, and back to his nest I guess. Beautiful bird. No dolphins yet today, but there are some really loud party goers two slips over and if I was a fish I wouldn’t be anywhere near this place right now. Maybe later.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Journal, Travel | Also tagged dinner, gulf coast, walking | Comments (1)

Beauty in the Sunset and then a Rainbow

February 18, 2008 – 5:17 pm

This week’s trip to the coast was very short, but oh so sweet. The weather was not cooperative enough to sit on the beach and knit, but the views the approaching storm gave us were absolutely wonderful. The image below was taken by Scott while he was walking on the beach, with his phone.

Camera phones have come a long way, but he took out his phone while he was walking and snapped this shot of the sun going down.

I sat in the car and knitted while Scott did his daily beach walking. The wind was blowing very hard and although the temperature was not too bad, the wind was bone chilling.

We took a lovely drive down streets we had not ventured down before and stumbled upon a community cemetery. Some of you may think this odd, but I love cemeteries. It is just so fascinating wandering through them looking at the headstones, with the dates and sometimes the epitaphs on them. Some of them can be quite amusing since they are placed there by those left behind.

During our drive we stumbled upon these guys (gals) and I just wanted to jump right out of the car and join them in the fun! This is called Powered Para gliding and I think this would be such a cool hobby!!

Although the trip was short this time, we were greeted by this when we arrived back at our house. Beautiful, no?

This rainbow came right over the property and the sun lit up the house across the pond. This rainbow, which turned into a double and triple rainbow lasted for a good 5-10 minutes, longest and brightest we have seen in a long time.

By tiger | Posted in Travel | Also tagged rainbow, sunset, Travel | Comments (1)

A Cold Day on the Beach in February is Empty and Fun

February 15, 2008 – 5:53 am

Some days a cold day on the beach is better than a warm day inside. The beaches, in most parts of the country right now, are completely empty, but put a nice cool breeze and January into the mix and you get this (see beach image below). Not only is there a rare February thunderstorm in the distance but the only visible moving object on the beach is a tiny little bird in the very center of the image. The sunsets at the marina are always so dynamic and each one is different. The thunderstorms here made just enough of a hole in the sky to give us a great sunset today.

This image was actually taken by my cell phone. I am really amazed at the quality of images that can be taken by a cell phone these days. Not that it is worthy of publication but for just sticking a phone up in the air, its not bad.

This weekend we did spend the day on the beach (see all the photos below) but we came down to be on Laughalot. We did enjoy the peace and quiet that the marina always has around this time of year, and of course on the beaches too.

We have several favorite beaches down here, some are in Florida, some in Alabama, but depending on the time of year, you can usually walk several miles in either direction and enjoy a quiet walk. As is customary for me, I try to get in about 5-7 miles while I am on the beach, here I am on my way, yes, it is cold. I don’t look all that thrilled but I really am glad to be there, even if the weather is a little harsh.

Of course, DK has here own way of keeping warm, stay in the tent, don’t move much and have a ton of layers on. We do have some larger shots of the tent area on the beach but this close up gives a better idea of how cold it really is down here today.

$Deborah\'s Beach Tent$

It still made for a very nice sunset at the marina and we had a great weekend on Laughalot.

By sailing | Posted in Coastal | Also tagged marina, sailboat, walking, winter | Comments (1)

The Weather is Here, I Wish You Were

October 14, 2007 – 5:40 pm

Beach Knitting I wish you were beautiful…. Actually, the weather is wonderful. It is cooling down, finally, and we found this fabulous tent thing at the dollar store. Can I hide out here forever? Scott says no, so tomorrow it is back to the house and back to our day jobs.

When we arrived at the boat there was a pod of dolphins, about 50 to 100 individuals, there to greet us. They were chasing schools of fish toward the shore and having a feast. Fascinating! Today we are off to the Shrimp Festival in Gulf Shores. Scott loves shrimp. Me, not so much. But I did spot a corn dog vendor yesterday while we were touring the arts and crafts part of the festival, so I’m set. I love sitting on the beach with not another person around. The photo here is just about what it is like here right now, empty on this beach. It is October and everyone is doing other things.

By dk | Posted in Coastal | Also tagged gulf coast, tent | Comments (0)

October is for the Annual National Shimp Festival in Gulf Shores

October 13, 2007 – 5:05 pm

We were able to come down for the weekend but not much else. When we got here we discovered that this was the time for the annual shrimp festival so we figured we might as well check it out while we were down here. We didn’t get much work done on the boat but we did see several beautiful sunsets while we were here this time.

This photo was taken on our boat from the slip just as the sun set over the gulf. It is amazing we can still be out here in relatively warm weather in mid-October but we will take it.

The annual shrimp festival was a lot of fun and there was tons and tons of food. We did not come down here for the festival but to enjoy being on the boat for the weekend but it was nice to get a flavor of the local society while we were here.

By sailing | Posted in Coastal | Also tagged alabama, festival, gulf shores, sunset | Comments (0)

Showers and Thunderstorms on Perdido Key and the Sailboat

July 16, 2007 – 3:07 pm

Friday morning we left for the boat for a long relaxing anniversary weekend on the boat. Scott’s parents had rented a condo for the week in Perdido Key, so when we arrived in Orange Beach we unloaded the boat stuff and headed over to the condo to visit. Scott and his parents went for a swim while I watched from the beach. They all headed out of the water when something kept stinging or biting the guys. The stings weren’t terribly painful, something like ant bites, but they couldn’t tell what the culprit was so they opted to depart the waves for a shower in the condo and dinner.

We dropped them off back at the condo after a good, but odd dinner at Doc’s Seafood Shack, Orange Beach and went for a walk on the beach before returning to the boat. If you haven’t been to Doc’s, you are missing quite an experience. The restaurant is an interesting little place to say the least. It is truly a shack in every sense of the word. Structurally sound, it is not. Driving by the place one has a sense that the food must be very good because the parking lot is always full. Upon closer inspection it is revealed that the parking lot is just woefully inadequate. This is not a reflection on the food, just poor planning.

This planning runs over into the construction of the shack itself. A building that should have been condemned many years ago, the restaurant consists of three to four rooms that seem to have been added one at a time to the initial existing structure, accommodating the increase in patronage through the years. Hence the lack of parking space. The walls are buckled in all the rooms from years of leaky air conditioning ducts, salt filled air and humidity.

There is a sign out front that reads “Local Food, Local Atmosphere”. Inside the entryway is a gum ball/game machine that we have personally witnessed several kids and more than one adult loose quarter after quarter in because they could not make the suction cup stick to a gigantic gum ball, which is the objective of the game. Even Scott’s father gave two quarters to his mom so she could try her luck. In another corner sits another game machine.

This one filled with water and a couple of pathetic looking lobsters. A claw hangs from above and for $3 you can try your hand at catching one of the lobsters with the claw. If you are lucky(?) enough to capture one of these creatures the restaurant will cook it for you for free. The place is quirky indeed, but the food is local seafood and the price is very reasonable.

The remainder of our weekend was spent listening to NOAA weather radio and watching the skies. The “showers and thunderstorms” that the NOAA voice reported to be imminent were and we enjoyed watching them roll in and over the boat. We were even treated to a rainbow while Scott tried his hand at fishing again. Dinner’s out were at the Oyster Bar in Perdido Key, FL and the Jolly Roger at the marina. Here are the photos, enjoy.

Storm at the marina

Storm at Perdido Key

Pretty Bird

By tiger | Posted in Coastal, Travel | Also tagged alabama, florida, marina, weather | Comments (0)

We Decided to Go Book Hunting in Miami Florida

February 25, 2007 – 9:03 am

To celebrate St. Valentines day this year we combined business with pleasure, as usual, and took a much needed escape (I mean trip) to Miami. We found a book distributor (NOT - more about this later) in Ft. Lauderdale who sold books by the pallet. We decided to go down and check them out to see if the books were worth our time. On the way down we stayed in Orlando and went to Universal Studios for dinner. We didn’t care much about going to the theme parks, but just outside the entrance to the theme park is the Universal Studios Mall. It is an open air mall with about 20+ restaurants. The largest two resturants there, in size and name, are the Hard Rock Cafe and Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville, where we ate. The atmosphere at Margaritaville was fun and of course laid back. They had a solo guitarist who was loads of fun with his crowd interaction. After dinner we decided to go play a round of putt-putt at a course across the street from our hotel. I won the putt-putt game, even after landing in the ruff, but Scott beat me at the air hockey table in the game room afterward. These first photos were taken with a cell phone so the size is pretty small.

Hard Rock Universal Studios

Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville Universal Studios

My expert golfing landed me here.

The Nascar Budweiser Car at Universal Studios

On To Ft Lauderdale to the Book Distributor

The next day we headed for Ft. Lauderdale and the so called book distributor. I say “so called” because we were expecting a warehouse with stacked pallets of books and what was actually there when we arrived was a 30′ x 100′ “warehouse” full of mostly made in Taiwan items. He had books in the back of the unit, but most had either fallen off their pallets, been crushed, or been subjected to so much humidity they were coated with mildew. We opted out of taking a pallet home and decided to continue looking elsewhere. This meant that the utility trailer that we had taken with us to bring back a pallet was still empty and that we now had room to take home a few plants from the wholesale nurseries in Miami. Yipee!!

Miami was packed with traffic congestion everywhere we went, but we managed to make it to the hotel and to dinner on South Beach. The water and sand was wonderful, but we have ruled this out as one of our spots to frequent because of the shear number of non-tourist people everywhere.

Beats the 40 degrees back home!!

The Hotel

Scott on the beach outside our hotel.

The temp may be 84, but the water is still cold!!

Walking with sand between your toes, what could be better?

Cleveland’s Miami Beach

We took the Hwy 997 route back home where we picked up some fabulous plants for our new house and a Key Lime tree just for the fun of it. Across the Everglades and up through Sarasota. The weather was changing as we were on our way back up north. The wind picked up and the temprature dropped from a cold front that was blowing through. We went to the beach anyway. Our last evening we ate at Boston Market (one of my favorite places) and stayed at a Comfort Inn Suites in Ocala that had been open about 2 weeks. It was probably the nicest, cleanest, and best smelling hotel we have ever stayed in. Then it was back to the house and back to searching for more suppliers for books.

Bird on Sarasota Beach

Me, cold again….

By tiger | Posted in Travel | Also tagged books, florida, miami | Comments (1)

Weekend Mortorcycle Riding in Panama City Beach Florida

September 6, 2006 – 9:44 am

About a month ago, August 18-20, we rode our bikes down to Panama City Beach for the weekend. We were originally going to ride down with a group of riders from Hog Heaven, in Columbus, GA for the Ride to the Beach, an annual bikers trip to raise money for the March of Dimes. We found out about the ride a little to late to garner sponsors this year so we just decided to make the trip ourselves for the fun and sun.

Along the way we took time to do a little geocaching.

We arrived at our hotel just as it began to rain. Since afternoon showers are common here we hung around in the room enjoying the view for a while until the storm subsided.

Once there was a break in the storm we headed out to dinner and to observe the nightlife of Panama City Beach. We decided to eat at a place called Pineapple Willy’s. This place is supposedly famous for it’s ribs that were featured in a Visa commercial some time back. The ribs were average, but the dinner was quite memorable. We arrived at Pineapple Willy’s just before it started to storm again. We were seated out on the far end of the gazebo pier and enjoyed our dinner while it rained heavily, complete with simultaneous lightning and thunder. Apparently we are braver than most because all the other tables in the gazebo cleared out as people finished their dinners and no one else wanted to sit out there in the storms. Eventually we had the entire end of the pier to ourselves. Magnificant!!

Saturday we spent the day exploring the city, marinas, and geocaching. We had lunch at a great little spot called Lime’s that was tucked away and was a bit of a challenge to find. Dinner that night was even more fabulous as we enjoyed the boat traffic and the sunset from the upstairs open air dining area of a place called the Boatyard.

We made our way back home on Sunday taking a few detours here and there to investigate some of the backroads of Alabama. Although the trip was very short it was a lot of fun and we were able to get a feel for how far we can travel comfortably on our bikes in one day (and how much stuff we can take along).

By kim | Posted in Travel | Also tagged florida, motorcycles, panama city | Comments (0)

Metal Dectecting in North Carolina is Good Exercise and Fun

June 1, 2005 – 8:38 pm

After leaving the aquarium we had lunch and then went to the beach for a little bit of metal detecting. This is one of our many hobbies. We didn’t find anything on this day and a storm was beginning to come in so we didn’t stay long.

On the way back home from the beach I took these pictures of Bodie lighthouse out the window of the truck. Not bad snapshots for 45 mph.

By kim | Posted in Journal | Also tagged fun, north carolina, sand, water | Comments (0)

Scott Fillmer

Tag Archives: beach

An Empty Beach is So Peaceful, Especially in North Carolina