Offline! At the Beach! With pending weather events! (Part I)

Monday, August 30:  (transcribed from handwritten notes:)

We arrived at Caswell Beach last night, unpacked the car, provisioned ourselves at the grocery store, and then took a short sunset walk on the beach. Bou the Beagle sniffed diligently, fulfilling her self-appointed duty to pee in every crab hole she could find.  Meanwhile, Asta the Wonder Mutt forgot her manners and pulled, incessantly, on the leash while we were near the surf. Too near, it seems, for Asta. It takes the pups a few days to acclimate to that loud, moving body of water.  For a brief while Asta barked at wind-driven foam, but the novelty quickly wore off.

Sunset on Monday

Out at sea, over the curve of the earth, Hurricane Danielle is moving out to the mid-Atlantic, leaving us alone whiel supposedly leaving a legacy of swells and rough surf, but there’s no evidence of that here on Oak Island.  More of a concern is Hurricane Earl, which is brewing up to be a big storm that just might mess with our plans later this week.

Asta insouciantly awaits the pending hurricane.

All last week I monitored Danielle’s progress via an RSS feed from the National Hurricane Center, delivered to my iGoogle desktop several times daily. I'm somewhat of a web weather junkie, with mild tendencies as these things go. We have a regional NOAA station in Blacksburg, and I check their website daily. If there’s the possibility of a weather “event,” as the professional weather pundits might term such natural occurrences as snow, heavy rainfalll, or a hurricane, then I go into researcher mode and dig deep into various weather resources. I rationalize this because I’m a librarian, and we like to search and then research. The online quest, in and of itself, is fun. And somewhat addictive, at times. More on that later.

Sea oat seed heads in a sandy hollow near the dunes

So Earl’s out there, and I'm at the beach without ongoing online RSS updates. That's because we’re offline for the entire week. Sure, I brought a laptop (mostly because there’s thousands of songs on my iTunes), as well as  my iPad, just  in case I wander off to the local public library or one of the handful of internet cafes here in the Oak Island/Southport neighborhood.  We’re offline because Birds of A Feather, the mawkishly monikered cottage we’ve rented, is a bit run down (check out the sound construction of the spiffy walkway in the above photo of Asta, and you'll see what I mean about rundown).  Wi-fi is pretty much out of the question here.  It’s full of rustic beachfront charm, but if you want your weather, then it’s the Weather Channel on the 24” Samsung TV. 

Overlooking the Intercoastal Waterway in Southport

So, for this week, we will be connected to weather prognostication via a method we don’t have at home, plain ol’ twentieth-century cable television.  Specifically, the Weather Channel. We’ll see how it goes....

In the meantime, we’ll have fun.

(We now leave me at the beach, reporting from last week, with a potential weather event looming over the horizon.  What will happen? Stay tuned....)

Imperiled by giant tropical drinks

Caswell Beach - September 2009

We spent the week of Labor Day at Caswell Beach, NC, on the eastern end of Oak Island, a barrier island just south of the mouth of Cape Fear River. Oak Island is an old, familiar place for us. We've been going there as long as I can remember going to the beach, my grandfather having built a cottage on Oak Island in 1960. Mostly unmarred by high-rise condos, hotels, and bars, it's a quiet beach where it's easy to relax, which is pretty much all we did the entire week. These photos document that trip.

The first day or so was rainy and cool, forcing us to don raingear for beach walks. Still, the beach has a unique beauty when it's gray and overcast:

By Tuesday the rain had ended, and we enjoyed partly sunny skies (as the more upbeat weatherpeople phrase it) for the rest of the week. Looking north from the beach in front of our cottage late in the afternoon shows the Oak Island Lighthouse on the left. To the right, across the mouth of Cape Fear River, is Bald Head Island, where an older lighthouse ("Old Baldy") still stands. Old Baldy was operational from 1817 until the Oak Island Lighthouse was built in 1958.


Below is the Google maps satellite image of our little stretch of Caswell Beach. We stayed in the second cottage from the right. Zoom out and you can see Caswell Beach, Cape Fear River, and Bald Head Island. Note how Caswell Beach is south facing.

View Larger Map

Back on the ground, here's the view looking out our back door.


Zoom in a bit and you'll see our festive beach umbrella, with Barrie actively engaging in beach-inspired relaxation.

The beach umbrella was our second effort at shade. Our first attempt was a nylon tripod structure we dubbed the "shade shack" (yep, to the tune of the B52's "Love Shack"). We set it up early in the week, and it did great until the wind picked up, when, as you might guess, the whole shack shimmied and fell down. Bad design. So we went the traditional, multi-hued beach umbrella route and it was a great success. But here's the view from under the shade shack:

Asta, our main mutt, and Bou, our backup utility beagle, had a great time at the beach, after a bit of acclimating. They loved to sit and stare out the screen door at the many other dogs that were at the beach.


And here they are hanging out with Barrie on the beach. The myriad of changing smells is a beagle's paradise, as Bou cheerfully demonstrates.

A few obligatory beach-level shots:

Scurrying bird tracks

Shell and sand. Itty-bitty grains. Lots of them.

A mess of stuff. Pine needles, fishing line, seaweed.

We drove over to Southport for lunch and to check out art galleries early in the week. We ate at a dockside place called Fishy Fishy Cafe, and the main entrance was blocked by water in the road during high tide. Here's a few images from our visit to this lovely harbor town:

Gadzooks! Could it be sharks attacking the stars and stripes?

Fishmongering for the gated-community set.

Extras assembling for a casting call for a remake of The Birds.

On the western end of Oak Island is Long Beach, where my grandfather built this cottage in 1960. The last time I saw it was 7 or 8 years ago, after several hurricanes had stripped the beach away, torn out all the plumbing and powerlines, and left it a box on stilts, looking for all the world like it would fall into the surf. Much to my amazement, they've pumped up sand from the river basin and rebuilt the dunes! And Daddy John's cottage still stands. That's it on the far right, shabby but respectable.


Every May sea turtles come up on the beaches of Oak Island and lay their eggs. I've been fortunate to witness this a few times, and it's quite a sight. Caswell Beach is a sea turtle sanctuary and has an active Sea Turtle Watch. This nest was near our cottage:

The nest below was down the beach a bit, and the Sea Turtle Watch has installed long borders on the nest below to guide the newly-hatched turtles back to the beach. You can check out an active record of this season's nest activity on this website.

As mentioned, Caswell Beach faces south, so the sun sets over the water, which is atypical for Atlantic beaches. Here's a few sunset shots, the first with Barrie walking Bou:

Good bye!