Dinner Monday was in Morehead City NC. The Sanitary Restarant....there are so many ways to go with that but we won't. It was a seafood restaurant, ok?
We left Morehead City on a beautiful morning. The shoreline held lovely homes and we appreciated the slow-going to view the homes.
Nice cruising, easy going today. The further south we headed the more spectacular the homes...Bogue Sound, Topsail, Wrightsville Beach, (oh, the riverfront homes), and through Swansboro. We went through New River Inlet, all was spectacular...weather, company, view and damn!!! We ran into a shoal and ran aground! :/ talk about adventure. No big deal, Towboat US (do we get a plug for this) got us out in spectacular fashion . Small delay.
Let's jump back for a moment.
Before we passed through the channel to Swansboro, we passed a restricted area associated with Camp Lejeune. The warning mentioned that if the lights were flashing to await an escort as this was a target range. Now we are am mere civilians and are all for encouraging our military to excel, but shooting at us? We pay taxes and their salaries. Seriously, all was safe as we went through but the residual of previous target practice was left behind in the form of destroyed tanks and armored vehicles.
And as we waited for our towboat we could hear loud cracks of what we thought was thunder. We soon realized that target practice was in full swing in the firing range not far from us, but not along the river. As the blasts became closer we eyed the skies but our tow boat came and diverted our attention.
After some navigational challenges we landed at St James Plantation Marina. Very nice. We gas up, slide into our slip and meet a gentleman who so kindly escorted us to the marina as he pulled up to a fuel pump. After 100 gallons of diesel went into the tank he looks up, has an ah-ha moment and realizes his boat uses gasoline! For you land lovers that is like giving vanilla to a chocoholic. Aaaaargh! Poor guy took a cab home with his family while we drank Coronas, Salty Dogs and wine at the Tiki Bar. It happens.