Re: Pix of Carova wild horses

On Sun, 14 May 2006 13:43:36 -0400, Mary McHugh wrote:
Ben Turner wrote:

Mary's pix (and posts) inspired a family vacation. More Carova horse
pix at: <http://mysite.verizon.net/bwturner/pictures/carova/index.html>


Kewl!

I seem to recognize the yellow house in 974. That's "our" turnoff.

Did you manage to navigate the canals? How was the weather this time of
year? Any conch shells on the beach?

We found a couple of accessible put-in points, but the only canoe trip
was the Jean Guite Creek down at the Kitty Hawk Woods Coastal Reserve.
The day planned for the Carova canals and the Knott's Island Bay/Channel
marsh found me recovering from a case of food poisoning (or swamp water
poisoning or something). Other options were limited by high winds.

Nonetheless, there were a lot of other things to do: lighthouses to climb
(Hatteras and Currituck), nature preserves and parks to explore (Pea
Island, False Cape State Park, Pine Island Audubon Sanctuary), kites to
fly, beaches to wander, birds to watch and peeps (sandpipers) to herd.
When the weather did sock us in, there was good food, conversation, and
fine music in abundance and the birds would come to us (ex. pelicans on
patrol routinely buzzed the house more often than the NAS Oceana F/A-18s).
In the best of weather, dolphins cruised the waters just off the beach.

Birding was fantastic with 4-6 types of sandpipers and plovers along with
the two types of pelicans (brown and American white) as near constant
companions at the house on Carova Beach. Excursions brought sightings of
many others including red-winged black birds, grackles, thrushes, a
fish-crow, hawks, eagles, osprey (including a fight between two osprey and
a bald eagle over the marshes at Kitty Hawk Woods), mockingbirds, terns,
cormarants, king birds, egrets (great, snowy, cattle), herons (great blue,
little blue and green), ibis (white and glossy), eastern towhee, great
crested flycatcher, various ducks and geese.

For us, it was convenient to be able to park on the beach with the kids.
If it were just me, I wouldn't need so much stuff. Maybe I need to
work on them being minimalists too. Catherine would be easy but the
Princess Rebecca (Princess Credit Card in waiting, with apologies to Ms.
Carroll) is hard pressed to leave stuff behind, much less her entourage.

I hope your vacation was relaxing and that all is well back at the
ranch. :)

Relaxing it was (probably helped by the satellite internet connection
not supporting my VPN thwarting some of my work communications); I'd
love for it to have been longer, but we're also happy to be home. Some
of the chores at Mare's Reach really can't stand for us to be away much
longer.

Thanks again for the original inspiration and the tips.

--
Best,
Ben Turner, Mare's Reach

.

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