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| Full moon after sunrise |
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| Taylors Creek & Rachel Carson Estuarine Reserve |
We were up with the sun this morning. Clay announced that he couldn't believe he had slept all night. I pointed out that he slept from 11:30pm to 6am which is about the same amount of time he would spend sleeping in the living room on a weekend day. He agreed that in that light, it was not as impressive a feat. Clay went out looking for an angle nearby to watch the sunrise and did not find one. Our view is more or less to the west, which puts the sunrise somewhere across Beaufort. We did get to see the full moon setting as the sky lightened up. By the time we were both showered and packed up it was time for breakfast.
The Inlet Inn provides a continental breakfast with their rooms. You can either call and have it delivered to your room or go to room 309. (I think I have that right! It is on the 3rd floor across from the elevator.) This is a kind of lounge for the inn and has a little loft and widows walk above with a bit better view than ours on 2. The rest of the 3rd floor rooms do not have balconies. Anyway, we thought it was going to be a kind of help yourself thing, so we went to the 3rd floor to eat and check out the view. It turns out that they prepare trays for every occupied room and that is what you get whether you show up in person or call for delivery. Either way, you can make special requests within the limited parameters. For example, Clay did not want a bagel so they left one off our tray, Clay did not want coffee, etc. So, we got a coffee for me to start and went out on the widow's walk for a while, but it was cold and breezy. The temperature changed today and while still nice for February, it was more in the normal temperature range than Saturday which was glorious and very warm for this time of year. We went back in and picked up one of the 2 News & Observer papers that were out and I took out tray up to the loft area. I continued to watch Carrot Island for horses while I had a bagel with cream cheese and another cup of coffee and Clay had 2 muffins and 2 orange juices while reading the paper. There is seating up there for 4 but no one else ever joined us. In fact, most people seemed to be calling in for delivery and we only saw a couple of other folks come in to the lounge area. We did not linger long.
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| Beaufort's Old Train Depot |
We went back out and walked more of Historic Beaufort. Still nothing open except churches. We walked to the bridge from Morehead City and then back to the Inn. By then it was time to reload the bus and depart for lunch.
Once onboard the bus, Bob repeated the announcement he apparently had made and we had missed in the Hatch House yesterday. Our caterer for lunch outside Farmville had canceled the day before we left. Bob had scrambled and called his old friends Bum & Shirley Dennis of Bum's of Ayden and their son had agreed to open on Sunday and put something together for us. This was a great treat even with short notice and short staff and a limited menu. Too bad it wasn't always them and they could have put on their normal hot buffet line for us with brunswick stew, collards and chicken pastry. Anyway, with a staff of 3 they did an excellent job and we enjoyed another wood cooked whole hog (served chopped bbq style this time!), fried chicken, cole slaw, bbq potatoes, corn sticks and warm banana pudding. Delicious! I don't know how I lived this long without ever eating banana pudding warm before! I even make it and have never thought about eating it steaming from the oven! Oh my! I ate 3 bowls full! When I saw it was steaming, I ate the first bowlful before I ate my lunch! It was another great surprise. We bought T-shirts and later they gave us each a nice Bum's coffee mug with the warning that the phone number on it was misprinted! That's OK we aren't likely to be calling. So, we got some great souvenirs to boot! After dinner we had a tour through the kitchen and to see the whole hogs in the walk-in cooler and out to the smokehouse where a new pig had been started for tomorrow's lunch. We have been to Bum's a number of times and drive through frequently to go to Grifton to visit Clay's family, but this was a special visit.
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| Bob covering the journalist covering our visit to Bum's |
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| Bob with Bum's lunch |
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| Another whole hog in Bum's smokehouse |
The drive back to Raleigh went quickly on 264 and their were a lot of people napping again. The folks going on to Greensboro got woken up when the Raleigh loaders departed! It was a good trip. Sadly, it will be our last
Bob Garner trip for a while. The April trip goes from Charlotte to Pinehurst. While it sounds like a good trip and we were interested in it, we just couldn't find a way to justify going to Charlotte to join it. Bob and Ruthie said onboard that they were on the verge of cancelling the April trip anyway because participation was not high enough to justify the trip. That's too bad. They haven't posted a trip after that, but Bob said that next up he would repeat the 1st trip's itinerary. While we enjoyed that trip, we probably won't sign up to repeat it. So, there you have it. We do have our next trip planned already though. It is in March and we will go to Atlanta for a weekend. There is more to do there than a weekend's but we are limiting it. We've both been to Atlanta several times before but we plan to do things we've never done before. So, stay tuned I'll be back next month with a new trip to report.
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| Ayden! |
