Last weekend Kristen, Samuel and I piled into the car, slipped onto I-40 and headed west. Our friends Sam and Heather had moved to Asheville a few months earlier, and we were long overdue for a visit. We arrived Saturday afternoon and proceeded to the Pisgah National Forest for a late picnic lunch. Once our burgers were gone, we let Sam and Samuel splash around in the stream a bit before we moved a little further into the forest. When we got to Looking Glass Falls, a few rays from the late afternoon sun managed to pierce the summer foliage, casting a brilliant rainbow that seemed to dance in and out of the mist on the water’s surface. A fairly large crowd had gathered to take in the sight, and several people decided to wade out into the pool at the base of the waterfall. Not bad for Samuel’s first mountain-top experience.

For Easter, Kristen and I travelled to Elizabeth City, a small harbor town at the mouth of the Pasquotank River, near the northern end of the Outer Banks. Our goal was simply to get away from home and be someplace peaceful and quite, knowing this would likely be our last chance to travel together before Samuel is born next month. We stayed at the Culpepper Inn, a prominent local fixture that I had seen many times before but never really visited. We arrived earlier than expected and immediately took a walk through the historic downtown area and strolled the docks. We listened to a pretty good bluegrass duo from Chesapeake fighting for the crowd’s attention at a local eatery and then made our way back to the inn.

Saturday morning we decided to head out to the islands. We drove through Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers made their historic flight, stopped for a delicious order of fresh cut fries and chocolate custard in Kill Devil Hills and then pulled over at Jockey’s Ridge in Nag’s Head. Jockey’s Ridge is the largest active sand dune on the East Coast. The bulk of the dune is likely the same pile of sand the Wright brothers launched their airplane from a few miles up the road in Kitty Hawk, it has just steadily migrated south over the past century. The dune is absolutely huge. The main plateau is probably only about 35 feet high, but the giant table-top of sand literally stretchs on for acres. Hundreds of families with hundreds of kites were already fixed atop the dune when we arrived, along with a few hang gliders. Still, it was easy to find a quite place and settle down in the dry, powdery sand that felt so different from the wet, sticky course, beach sand just a few hundred yards away. We capped the day off with a quick visit to the Currituck light house on the northern end of the island.

Sunday afternoon we decided to visit the Great Dismal Swamp — a national wildlife refuge that spans the North Carolina-Virginia border. We saw turtles, frogs and a woodpecker during our stroll through the swamp, which isn’t really as dismal and swampy as the name implies. The huge swamp areas on the northern coast of the state are worlds apart from the stagnant, slime-coated, bacteria-laden waters found in the woods in the central part of North Carolina, or in my native South Carolina. The Dismal Swamp is full of clear, blue-hued water that lazily flows to and fro among the forest of cypress trees that engulfs it. Wildlife is abundant.

We had a good visit in Elizabeth City. It was Kristen’s first time seeing the town, and the first chance I have had to explore the streets and creeks that occupied most of my time as an adolescent. I had the joy of living in a variety of locals growing up. Each one had unique advantages and disadvantages. It’s hard to compare my experiences growing up in different places because the first 18 years of life are so full of constant changes in themselves. For the most part, the bulk of my time spent living in each different community also marked a different phase of life for me as a child, adolescent and teenager, so it’s not really fair, or easy, to compare them. Still, all things considered, I think Elizabeth City was by far the most interesting, and simply enjoyable, place that my family brought me to live in. I wouldn’t have a single qualm about moving back, if that is the direction my life ever moves to again.

Visiting the places I have lived before is always a little strange though. I can’t help but to recall the experiences I hold connected with each familiar landscape. I notice how so many things have changed in my absence, while other details seem fixed forever. I never really know how to react when I encounter my past. My life has changed so much over the past few years, when ever I visit a place from my past, I can’t help but to feel that I’m no longer the same person I was when I left. I don’t know whether I want to let myself go to reconnect with my past, or whether I should just explore the city anew, looking for new experiences and new details that I would easily miss if I were only looking for things connected with my earlier life. I always face this dilemma when I visit the places where I grew up; I don’t have the same problem when I visit Blowing Rock, where Kristen and I went to college, got married, began our careers and turned our first apartment into a home. I think the difference has something to do with the fact that the life I built in Blowing Rock was my own, while my life in Elizabeth City, and the many other places I lived growing up, was inseparable from the life my parents built for me — not a bad thing by any means, just the way life is. Moving to Blowing Rock was my choice; the things I did there, the job I had, the house I lived in, were all my choices as well; perhaps most importantly, leaving Blowing Rock was my choice. The fact that I wasn’t in control of most of my earlier life — my parents decided where I would live, what I could and couldn’t do with my time and when I would move again — greatly affects the lens through which I view my past.

At least that’s what I think today. Who knows.

So, now that you’ve made it through all of that, enjoy a sampling of my shots from our holiday weekend in and around Elizabeth City. I know this gallery is way too big. Click any image or thumbnail to pull up a full-size viewer that will let you click through the entire collection at your leisure.

*I (David Anderson, Jr.) am the original author of all of the images connected with this post except for the final picture, which was kindly taken by our waitress at the Marina Restaurant in Elizabeth City. Enjoy!

Clouds Over Grandfather

We made it back from the camping trip with nothing put a set of sore legs, a half eaten box of oatmeal and some good memories. I don’t believe I’ve really spent a whole weekend vacation with my mother and brothers in the five years since I graduated from high school, and so it was good to have the whole family together in my old stomping ground in the western part of our state with nothing on the agenda at all.

After much coaxing, I was able to get the group to set off on a hike of the Boone Fork Trail — a five mile loop that should take two to three hours. During the first three hours we tried unsuccessfully to find a spur trail off of the loop that would lead us to a waterfall / rock formation we had only driven to before.

Zachary frolicking over the falls

Then Zachary, my 19-year-old brother, disappeared up the side of a mountain and into the woods. We didn’t think much of it for a while and continued on down the trail, but after 30 minutes or so when he didn’t show up, we began to get worried and set off looking for him.

By this time we had given up on finding our missing waterfalls and were just hoping to find Zach and get back to camp before nightfall. Jacob and I set off into the woods about 1/4 mile from the spot on the trail where we lost Zach, hoping we would head him off. He heard us calling for him and shouted back. He had no idea how he’d done it, but while trying to find the trail again, Zachary stumbled into the rock formation we’d spent all day looking for. The boys played around some and then we got back to camp just in time to get a fire and supper started before the sun set — six hours after we’d started our hike.

At The Village Cafe in Blowing Rock

Earlier in the day, Kristen and I set out on a hunt for breakfast. I decided not to tell Kristen what we were doing and just lead a walk from our campsite alongside the Blue Ridge Parkway and into Blowing Rock, where we had a formal brunch in the outdoor garden of The Village Cafe. Our smelly camp clothes stood out in sharp contrast to the waitstaff and tourists that sat around us, but after walking more than five miles to get to our table, we felt like we deserved a good breakfast just as much as the next guy.

As far as photographs went on this trip, I was pretty captivated with the cloudy skies over the mountains at every vista. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to shoot the mountains in sunny weather and generally tried to avoid taking the camera out in the rainy months. After the first night, we never had much rain on this trip but the scattered cloud cover hung over us the entire weekend, creating some neat sunburst scenes and really providing a powerful atmosphere that matched the prominence of the landscape.

Reading by the lake

Jacob. Lost.

Dusk on the river

Camp stove

On the way to breakfast

Parenthood

Endor Iron Furnace near Sanford, N.C.

I’ve been working on a story about Endor Iron Furnace for The Herald for a few days now and I thought I really should see the structure for myself to get a better understanding of its significance. The furnace was built in the years leading up to the Civil War. Sitting just a stone throw away from the Deep River, the furnace churned out iron ore to be used for munitions and railroad equipment for nearly two decades before the local mineral deposits ran dry.

In 1874, the furnace was abandoned. For more than a century it sat alone and forgotten in the woods two miles off of the nearest road.

In recent years, local advocates have been trying to raise money to turn the furnace and the adjacent land into a state park, but they’ve had difficulty raising support for their cause because people just don’t know what the furnace is. Hopefully a recent turn of events will change that. Read more about that in The Herald next week.

I love finding new trails to explore and finding a cool historical site along the way makes it even more worthwhile. While it may not be the best time to be raising money to build a new state park (or maybe it is exactly the kind of thing we should be doing during a recession, who knows?) this is a neat stretch of public property that anyone would enjoy visiting.

My pictures don’t do a good job putting the furnace in perspective. It is about 30 feet high and 25 feet wide at the base. A grown man standing beside the furnace would stand on level with the top of the hearth. The side shown above is in the best condition, while much of the smokestack on the other sides has collapsed.

Here’s a few more pictures.

I've been playing around with white balance settings, trying to bring out the richest colors without making the images unnatural.

On the trail to Endor.

A surfer scopes out the waves at Wrightsville Beach while a sailing armada drifts in the distance.

It’s been almost three weeks since my last post, but I still don’t have a motorcycle. During the interim, Kristen and I have been stripping and repainting the interior of our home, I’ve been transitioning into a new job at The Sanford Herald and working with our downtown development director on a personal project to add some atmosphere to my neighborhood. It feels more like three months than three weeks, but I had a good energy boost that kicked it all off.

Back in May, Kristen and I took a day trip to Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach. We had lunch on the waterfront in Wilmington, strolled through the historic district and then spent a good five hours wasting the day away on the sand at Wrightsville.

Kristen strolls near the water's edge looking at the treasures washed in with each new wave.

I’ve been to dozens of beaches along the Carolina coast, lived at a few of them, and seen more exotic shores in Asia, Florida and the Caribbean. The more beaches I visit though, the more I’m impressed by how unique each mile of sand really is — especially in Carolina. On this overcast Saturday, we found Wrightsville Beach covered in a powdery white sand that faded into the bluest water I’ve seen north of Cozumel. Typically the ocean in the mid-Atlantic holds a greenish-gray tint within 10 miles of the coast and then slowly starts to blend into the richer blues of the gulf stream 100 miles out. Not this day, though. I couldn’t take a picture that did the water justice, but standing their looking out, it just seemed to transition perfectly into the rich blue sky.

About 500 yards out, hundreds of sailing dinghies clustered together for a couple of hours, possibly waiting to see if the brooding clouds would dish out any rain, and then scattered off into the sea. Without any fanfare or warning, a wedding party complete with a steel-drum player, stormed the beach, each guest carrying his or her own folding chair, and held a short ceremony in the midst of the sunbathers and surfers.

Being at the beach really gives Kristen and I a great chance to catch up with each other and talk about where our life has brought us and what we plan to do next. We split most of the day between laying in the sand reading and walking for a few miles along the coast. I couldn’t resist the rush of racing into the cool water and fighting with the salty waves, though, and I was able to drag Kristen along a couple of times. The ocean offers a true feeling of renewal when I need it most.

At times I wish I could live in a real beach town again. Somewhere with real character and history like Wilmington, a peaceful fishing village like Beaufort or even my native Myrtle Beach. But I do love the town I’m in now, and Wrightsville Beach is just a little more than an hour’s drive from my door — not even twice my daily commute to work — so for the time being, it’s perfect. I hope to make many more day trips like this as the summer continues.

Looking Ahead.

I was flipping through some of the thousands of pictures I’ve taken over the past few years (most of them were better left covered) and, even though I’m sure I’ve seen them all many times, every now and then one pops out that I never really noticed before.

Distant Dreams

I don’t remember what inspired me to take this far-off picture of the U.S. Capitol, but I do remember the trip I took it on. I can say with certainty that as I walked along the gravel path that day I was almost spellbound at the experience of being in the midst of real power. When I look at the picture today it leaves a different impression. I’m struck by how far away the Capitol — one of the many grand products from an earlier age, when a nation was built on personal sacrifice and hopes for a better future — is. It seems almost too far to reach and definitely too small to be of any real importance in the world of this image.

The picture of the Capitol serves as both a reminder of my trip to D.C. that day and, at least in my opinion, a fun piece of art. Other photos fall short of both of these goals, but are still just as fun to make and look at.

Spinning Turkey

This was just a spontaneous shot of Kristen pulling the bird out of our oven last Thanksgiving. Below is another fun shot of my brother Jacob, having fun and smiling of all things. I think the different shades of green and yellow in the background add a neat touch.

"Where's my helmet?"

Neither pictures try anything that hasn’t been done, and over-done, millions of times before; but both were fun for me to take and fun to look at again.

Kristen and I spent two nights in the Wilson Creek wilderness area, just south of Grandfather Mountain, over Easter weekend in 2009. We had intended to stay for longer, but, being freshmen backpackers, we weren’t able to accurately pace ourselves using the rough map of the area.

Click any image in the sequence to open up a slideshow viewer.

At least we started the trip on the right note. This was our first time backpacking together, and the first real outing we used our new Canon 450D.

Our trail followed the Lost Cove Creek for the first four miles. The lightly blazed trail crossed the river every few hundred yards, usually with no 'easy' way across.

We didn't start hiking our first day until about 5:30 p.m., giving just a couple of hours to get familiar with the terrain before we had to set up camp.

Kristen managed to find the sun, despite cloudy skies and thick rhododendron overhead.

Having not passed anyone but a group of a day hikers who started at the same time as we had, we just set up camp on the trail by the creek our first night.

Posing together after breakfast.

Much to our surprise, barely 100 feet from our camp site was a beautiful set of waterfalls we lounged by the next morning.

In April the water was still too cool for swimming, though it was tempting.

Water crashing off a rock

We spent hours baking on the cool rock, reading, eating grapes and listening to the rushing water on Easter Sunday.

Waterfalls feed a whirlpool perfect for soaking.

Kristen and Dulles romping on the rocks.

Another mile or so down the trail and we came across this towering blue waterfall.

Kristen rests after reading by a mountain lake Sunday afternoon.

We camped just above this waterfall, which poured down another tier before emptying into a crystal lake.

Camping in the Blue Ridge.

A mountain watering hole.

Loaded up and ready for the home stretch.

The only crossing where staying dry was an option.

Days well spent.