Category Archives: Blog Update

Avoiding cabin fever

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We are getting more snow this winter than I remember in a long time; same with the cold temperatures. I don’t know the stats, but we don’t often get temps in the negatives for so many days in the season.

Hoping my outdoor plants are making it through and harboring some potted ‘shrublings’ in the basement until it warms up some and stabilizes.

It’s not so bad to hunker down and stay warm. There are plenty of things to do, such as get back to sewing and drawing. These are some small art quilts I’m working on (6″ x 8″):

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And drawing the old-fashioned way again, with pencil, ink and paper:

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And dreaming of having my own beautiful greenhouse, like those I saw in an HGTV photo gallery (or any greenhouse really):

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The whole gallery is here, if you’re interested:

http://www.hgtv.com/gardening/well-loved-and-used-greenhouses/pictures/index.html?i=1

Hope it is warmer and sunnier in your neck of the woods!

Winter arrived today

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Winter is here all of a sudden.

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And the Thanksgiving things get put away tomorrow.

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Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, so I’m a bit sad.

However, winter and Christmas bring their own delights. I love the sound of Christmas carols throughout the house and crackling fires in the fireplace and drinking eggnog out of snowman mugs. And maybe the chance of zinging a few good snowballs on the sly, until Eric and Trixie gang up on me :)

OSU 2013 Festival of Cartoon Art

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I was fortunate to attend this event over the weekend. It’s a triennial event held at The Ohio State University. This year it coincided with the grand opening of the expanded Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum , now the largest and most comprehensive academic research facility documenting printed cartoon art. Getting to participate in a 2-day academic conference dedicated to the study of cartoon art, followed by 2 days of presentations from professional cartoonists, was very cool. These folks come from all over to present at the conference, covering such topics as:

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The museum itself was simply wonderful:

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The exhibits included prints and originals from legendary cartoonists such as Walt Kelly and Will Eisner, to modern-day favorites like Bill Watterson and Lynn Johnston. Congratulations to OSU for such a fine accomplishment!

Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse

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A short walk from Roanoke Island Festival Park, lies the Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse. Lying at the end of a pier in the waterfront harbor, this was the third lighthouse we got to see close-up on our trip.

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Very charming!

From http://www.townofmanteo.com:

The Town of Manteo dedicated the Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse on Saturday, September 25, 2004. The lighthouse is on the Manteo waterfront, on the east side of Roanoke Island.The Roanoke Marshes Light  is an exterior reconstruction of the square cottage-style screw-pile lighthouse which stood at the southern entrance to Croatan Sound, near Wanchese. It was decommissioned in 1955, and lost in the Sound during an attempt to move it to private property.

Near the lighthouse, is a Weather Tower. The US Weather Bureau once used Coastal Warning Display towers such as this one to fly signal flags to warn mariners of wind shifts or approaching storms.

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The Manteo Weather Tower is believed to be one of only five towers still in use, and may be the only one with all of its original signal lights affixed.

While the lighthouse and the weather tower were undeniably the best sights to see in the harbor, we did see something else that was very cool!

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This guy was using a water jet pack to cruise around the harbor! Maybe this is not new to the average joe, but we had never seen one and were enthralled. I wanted to try this so bad, but it just wasn’t in the cards that day.

All in all, our impromptu trip to Roanoke Island was one of the best days of our trip. We left the island, picked the dogs up from the kennel and ended our day back on Hatteras, just in time to view a beautiful sunset.

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The Lost Colony

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Our second to last day of vacation, we decided to visit Roanoke Island, known as the site of the first English colony in the New World. Having not been in a history class for many moons, we were a bit confused, as we were thinking that Jamestown, Virginia, was the location of the first settlement.

We got the scoop once we entered Roanoke Island Festival Park. The Park was like a living museum, complete with a reproduction Elizabeth II, the ship that brought the settlers across the Atlantic:

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Visitors are encouraged to go inside the ship, explore and converse with the reenactors.

On the grounds is an American Indian village (also reproduction):

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and a replica of the actual first settlement, including a working blacksmith reenactor (not pictured) who was forging nails for the tourist:

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The pictures don’t really do this place justice. There was much more to it. It really felt like a living history class. And speaking of history, we learned that Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, established around 20 years after Roanoke.

Roanoke, unfortunately, came to a mysterious end, and became known as the Lost Colony.  One of the colonists, John White, left for England in 1587 to obtain much needed supplies so that the colony would survive the coming winter. He expected to return to Roanoke within three months. Instead, he was delayed for lack of a ship, as England was involved in a war and all ships were confiscated for use in the war efforts. It was 1590 before he was able to get back to his new home on Roanoke. When he arrived, he found the colony had simply vanished. The only clue he found was the word “CROATOAN” carved into a tree, perhaps indicating that the colonists had headed to the island of that name (now known as Hatteras Island). He was never able to find the colonists, among whom were his daughter and granddaughter, the first English child born in the New World.

Next post: our third lighthouse on this trip!

Butterfly Garden – milestone!

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This evening I got the first plants into the to-be butterfly garden. After finding out how much it will cost to have bulk top soil added to the space, I realized that I may have to really go piece by piece. So, I planted 3 coreopsis and raised the bed with 3 bags of topsoil. Add mulch, and voila!

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ok, looks pretty puny when I see the overview.

No matter, it’ll get there :)

Ocracoke Island

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On Friday, we took a ferry from Hatteras Island to Ocracoke Island. I’m a water person, and the ferry ride itself was fun. The fact that there was no charge (how nice is that?!) simply meant “Free Boat Ride” to me. Our destination became almost an afterthought.

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Trixie was eager to get on with it:

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At one point, we had a Coast Guard escort:

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Although I was really looking forward to seeing Ocracoke, a part of me was sad when the ferry ride ended.

If you’ve never been to Ocracoke, you are missing a very laid-back fishing village. I was delighted to see that it has retained the non-commercialized atmosphere. We saw no chain restaurants or hotels (same could really be said for Hatteras Island too, with the exception of a small Dairy Queen). Like Hatteras, one main road and many quaint side streets. Perfect for bicycling, which we saw was a prevalent activity on the island.

I found a little bookstore that had a mighty good selection of books and art supplies, ‘Books to be Red’ (www.bookstobered.com). For such a small store, I actually found 5 distinct books on brewing beer, which I was happy to tell Eric (who was waiting patiently outside with the dogs) about, so that he could take a look on his turn to go inside.

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We got to see another lighthouse, Ocracoke Light. Eric and Trix led the way, Holly in the foreground, yours truly taking up the rear:

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Not quite as tall as you might expect in a lighthouse, what it lacked in size was made up for in charm and history. This is the oldest operating light station in North Carolina, and one of the oldest in the nation. We did get to go inside (they even let Trix and Holly go in with us). This being my first time inside of an actual lighthouse, I am getting more and more hooked on them.

All in all, we had a splendid day on Ocracoke (so much so that we went back a couple days later, our last day of vacation).

Next post will describe our visit to Roanoke Island. We hadn’t planned on going there, but sure glad we did!

Hatteras Island Pet Resort

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We love being able to take our dogs when we travel, and they’ve gotten quite used to the road trips that we love so much. However, sometimes it is nice have a little free time to do whatever we like without having to worry about them. We did our homework before we left for the Outer Banks, and found a boarding kennel that also offers day boarding, which we ended up doing for three of our six days there.

This post is intended to be a big “Thank You” to Andrea, owner and operator of Hatteras Island Pet Resort, and to her assistant, Marissa (www.obxpetresort.com).

Our dogs mean the world to us, and I tend to be picky about things such as kennels, when we do have to use them. I’d called Andrea before we left to see about things such as reservations, vaccination records, etc., and she was so very friendly that I felt immediately at ease.

When we got there,  she showed us around the facility and was just super nice. Her facility was immaculate and all the dogs staying there seemed so relaxed. Maybe the ocean air and sun does that to them as well as to us…?

Next up, our side trip to Ocracoke Island.

Outer Banks Brewing Station

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When traveling, we always like to stop at the local brewpubs. Eric (DH) is a home-brewer, and as such, the two of us have become beer snobs connoisseurs. After we left the Wright Brothers landmark, we dropped in to the Outer Banks Brewing Station, also in Kill Devil Hills, conveniently located very near the Wright Brothers landmark.

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Great place! Great beers, too.

I had a LemonGrass Wheat Ale, and after tasting I could easily understand why it is a World Beer Cup Silver Medal winner. Eric had an Intergalactic IPA, also medal-worthy.

They served a decent lunch to boot. We’d already decided before we left for our trip to eat only one meal out, and the other two “homemade” in our efficiency room or packed and taken with us. So, we really made the most of our one restaurant meal each day.

We started with Fried Tuna Bites (from their menu: “Caribbean Jerk Seasoned tuna bites served with mango salsa”). YUM! I could have made a meal out of these alone.  However, I did go ahead and order a sandwich: Portabella Press sandwich (“Marinated and grilled portabella, red onions, mozzarella, sun dried tomato tapenade, spinach, & pesto on house bread”). This was a hearty sandwich and I took half of it with me for dinner. Eric had the Station Burger (“Half pound of beef burger marinated in beer. Hand pattied and spiced by an actual human being”).

(note – I will not go into such detail for each our meals on this trip; there were a couple that really stood out, and it’s kinda nice thinking about them again)

One of the coolest things about this brewery is the fact that they are America’s first wind-powered brew pub. They have a wind turbine right on their property, just behind the restaurant. (if you would like to know more: http://www.obbrewing.com/about-the-pub/wind-powered-brewery/) The photo below gives some quick facts:

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I hope the photo comes out to be legible, because it’s really impressive what these guys have accomplished. Hats off!

Anywho, that’s enough for tonight. Tomorrow,  I’d like to give a thanks to one of the nicest kennels we’ve known.

“…it is not really necessary to look too far into the future…

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…we see enough already to be certain it will be magnificent. Only let us hurry and open the roads.”
Wilbur Wright

The Wright Brothers National Memorial was surreal.

The museum itself has been very nicely done:IMG_2720

What really makes the impact is outside, where those first historic flights actually took place:IMG_2732

Many of us might have grown up being taught and taking for granted phrases such as “Orville and Wilbur Wright, Kitty Hawk, first airplane flight, etc”, but when you really think about it, what an inspirational thing! Standing in the spot where they made those first flights gives it life and meaning.

A quote from Bill Gates says it best: ““The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural          force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.”

This was a highlight of our trip and something I hope to always remember.

Next up, the Outer Banks Brewing Station.