I LOVE North Carolina!

This is looking up the street from the waterfront in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina.

We have spent the past few days entertaining my younger sister and her wonderful husband!! I should say they entertained us!! Not only did her husband take over the kitchen and all cooking, but my sister cleaned, did laundry and made many useful suggestions as well as purchases to help maintain this house!! I am ahead of the game now!! You couldn't have better guests!

We had one horrendous day of rain and fog almost the whole day but that was just to prepare us for the wonderful days afterwards! Yesterday we got to downtown Wilmington before the crowds descended for the Azalea Festival which is the main tourist event for the year! I don't know whether downtown Wilmington is always this nice, but it sure was yesterday!!

Wilmington is actually a seaport on the Cape Fear River which meets the Atlantic Ocean just three miles from my beach house. Downtown Wilmington is just beautiful and very reminiscent of Savannah to me. There are fewer shops right on the river but lots of nice restaurants. There is a boardwalk that goes right along the river for about a mile (it was just extended) lined with restaurants and about a block east on Front St., there are a number of shops as well as more restaurants. You could see the vendors setting up for the Azalea Festival right across the street from the boardwalk. We had no trouble finding parking which was nice. We walked the boardwalk and Warren and Bill spent their time watching the Coast Guard try to bring in and dock another of their very large vessels. It was a bit of a comedy of errors according to the guys and provided them with a lot of entertainment.

Bill spotted the USS North Carolina docked on the other side of the river and suggested we go over there for a better look. We stopped at Subway and picked up some sandwiches for lunch and had a picnic over there (did I say the weather has been glorious!!).

We watched a huge oil and chemical tanker amble down the river to go out to sea with its load dumped at the pipeline that is in Wilmington. It looked amazing on this relatively narrow river!

This was the Jo Oak with the tug boat that had just aided its turn in the river.

Today was even more beautiful than yesterday so we all headed to the beach to soak up some sunshine!!

Warren and Lisa spotted a diving duck a little ways down the beach which I had to try and photograph. After a number of tries, I finally got one where it wasn't diving and Lisa got a couple before it flew away. We identified it later as a Bufflehead which is a pretty common duck but not one I had seen before! I have also seen numerous house finches with their bright red chests -- they are redder than the New York purple finches we get at home.

Here is the silly Bufflehead riding a wave. He spent most of his time diving for food though!

Not quite sure whether this is a solitary or spotted sandpiper. It was a bit smaller than the willets with more distinctive coloring. I liked the justaposition of the bird against the waves breaking in the background.

Of course, it wouldn't be a picture day without one of George! This is George cuddled up to Lisa's cat Yahi. It was just one continuous furball. It is impossible to get pictures of Cheney as he is just too black and the camera doesn't recognize him!