Waves & Harmony

The next couple of weeks were spent heading south for the winter. Our next stop was Waves, NC, on the Outer Banks, one of my favorite places because of its proximity to the ocean. We stayed at the same place as the last couple of years at Camp Hatteras RV Resort & Campground (http://camphatteras.com/), and our site was about 100 yards from the sand dunes that separate the campground from the beach. This is the latest we’ve ever been at this location, and though generally very windy, it was also cold. But that didn’t stop us from taking the dogs for walks on the beach and letting them sniff and run. Abby is such a beach baby! Mikey generally likes to simply meander along, enjoying the breeze and all those ocean smells. The ocean was especially riled up while we were there, and suddenly the tide would come rushing higher onto the beach as we’d rush to avoid getting wet. One particular time Mikey didn’t move fast enough since he can hardly hear any longer and couldn’t hear us yell at him to come quickly. Oh well, he didn’t seem to mind getting his feet wet.

We spent a week here and really didn’t do much but relax and walk on the beach. One day we had planned to once again visit the Wright Brothers National Memorial (www.nps.gov/wrbr) at the other end of the island, but it had been particularly stormy the night before, and as it turned out, the ocean had washed up over the sand dunes a few miles down the road on Hwy. 12 (the main road connecting the islands of the Outer Banks). We were sitting in a line of traffic as an officer came along to inform each car that the road was closed just a couple miles ahead, and there was a foot and a half of water this side of the bridge. Glad we had visited it a couple of years ago! I've included a shot of the GPS so you can see how narrow the land is between the Atlantic Ocean and Pamlico Sound...in spots only a mile across! However, if you’d like to read more about the area on our previous trips, there are two entries for 2008 which you can access by clicking these links: WavesMay2008 and WrightBrosMay2008, and if you’d like to read about last year’s visit, simply click on this link: WavesMay2009.

Next stop on this trip was Summerton, SC, enjoying the fall colors as we traveled down the highway. We stayed at Big Water Lake Club Campground (sorry, no website at this time) for a few nights, just off I-95 about 70 miles northwest of Charleston. We would have liked to have stayed in the Charleston area, but there are no C2C campgrounds (at $10/night) and we were going to continue our trip down I-95 to FL so this place made the most sense. Nice campground though if you're a light sleeper, you might not appreciate the noise from the highway. Didn't really bother us though.

Now you may remember in a previous post I said that I generally don’t travel more than 30 min. to visit a Sweet Adeline chorus, but this time I did to see my old friends of Southern Harmony Chorus (http://www.southernharmonychorus.com/). I met up with 6 of them for dinner a couple hours before rehearsal, and before leaving the restaurant, the server insisted we sing something for her. Since we did have all 4 voice parts present (critical in barbershop!), we serenaded the restaurant with Thank You Dear Lord for Music, a Sweet Adeline staple that I still remembered, and got a generous round of applause. Then it was off to rehearsal to see Tom (the director) and the rest of the gang. Some gals are no longer with the chorus and there are some new faces, but the energy and excellent singing is still there. (You may remember them from previous posts.) They were preparing for their upcoming Christmas show, and thanks to the absence of one of the ladies, I got to stand in her place. I had such a blast singing with that old gang of mine (tee hee) and didn’t even mind the long drive back to the campground at 10:00 that night.

From here we made a one night stop at King George RV Resort in Woodbine, GA, a place we’ve stayed before and definitely nothing special, and then it was on to Clermont, FL, our home for the winter.