On to Ocracoke
01 June 2016 | River Dunes, N.C.
Arwen hasn't been out of her slip in New Bern in months and she needed a thorough cleaning before we could head down the Neuse and across Pamlico Sound for Ocracoke and the Ocrafolk Music Festival. We got a later-than-planned start and we didn't have as much time as we'd have liked to scrub her decks, clean her canvas and get the accumulated pollen, mold and other grim cleared away, but she was much improved by the time we untied the lines and pointed her bow down river Tuesday morning. It was our plan to stay overnight at River Dunes and cross the sound today. But the weather dictated otherwise. So we're spending another night at River Dunes, which is one of the best places I can think of to be pinned down by storms, but we are anxious to get settled in on Ocracoke before the festival starts, so it was a hard decision to stay put, even though it was the wisest thing to do.The forecast for tomorrow looks better!
It's been fun watching the barn swallows who nest under the ramps that connect the floating docks to the harbor bulkhead at River Dunes. They are true acrobats of the air. One of the beautiful birds landed on our lifelines and spent a considerable amount of time grooming. Robert spotted him (or her) when he was preparing to close the hatch before a storm passed through. We watched and photographed him for sometime through the hatch. River Dunes is a good place for birdwatching. Since we arrived late Tuesday afternoon, in addition to the barn swallows, we've seen chimney swifts, a red headed woodpecker, a green heron, mockingbirds, thrashers, cardinals, blue birds, a couple of bobwhite quail and a deer. On the trip down the Neuse, we saw osprey nesting on a couple of channel markers.