The OTHER Carolina

Posted by: Nic'n'Sal

We have just returned from Spring Break in the other Carolina (South Carolina that is). We spent a long weekend at Pawley's Island, one of the chain of barrier islands that skirts the coast of the Carolinas from the north of Pamlico Sound, past Myrtle Beach, and to points southwards. The big red arrow below should give you some idea of the location - about a 5 hour drive from Durham.



We stayed at our friend Mary Turnipseed's family beach house (read "beach mansion"), which sits 10m above the ground on long stalk legs built up so that storm surges from passing hurricans can just pass beneath the main body of the house without washing it all away. Given its admittedly gorgeous but precarious position on a 67m wide strip of land, this seems like a very sensible precaution!

Here is the view from the inland side of the house - a tidal creek filled with private jetties and decks.

And here is the view on the ocean side - pure North Atlantic stretching out to Bermuda and thence to Africa... both of these photos are taken facing south.

What did we do... well, a lot of eating, drinking, lounging, sleeping, reading, and a few more energetic activities... here are a lot of rather sozzled people on the front deck enjoying margaritas and bbqed prawns... yum.

Despite the frivolity a few of us got up in time to enjoy a sunrise over the sea (a novelty for two West Aussies).

But mostly we sat around enjoying not being at work and not being inland in Durham!

We did have a taste of adventure... here is Sal taking a kayak up the creek for a bit of a paddle. No sooner had I (Sal) returned than Nic stole the kayak and went to face one of his greatest fears... the sea. You can imagine my surprise when, having showered and cleaned myself up, I was lounging around and looked up to see Nic heading into shore... through the breakers from the sea. He had paddled all the way down the mouth of the creek, through the breakers there to the ocean, up the coast, and then managed to surf his way back in (wiping out impressively in the process). Those of you who know Nic well know that he really is quite phobic about the ocean...this was amazing! He's pretty damn proud of himself and hasn't stopped bragging about it, but I think he deserves to on this one occasion...

And finally, here is Najer, our friends' crazy-eyed dog. Named after Lucas' favourite cobra species in Africa, Naj lives up to his name by being completely hyperactive...but he's a sweety really.