It seemed like overnight, many trees went from winter barren to bright green. Early bloomers like azaleas have started.
We have fronts rolling through about every 2 days. Cool nights and warm days .
In case our northern brethren need to escape. The Canadians have probably already invaded Myrtle Beach.
Do the waiters and waitress of Myrtle Beach know not to be on the lookout for Canadian coins?
I avoid Myrtle Beach, except to get to some great paddling near Conway.
Rookie’s midst the bergy bits,
just off Little Traverse Light,
where she harbors point that to spring dis joint
she’s gonna need a few more nights.
With the blue of the water, if you threw in a few palms trees, it could almost be mistaken for somewhere in the tropics(photo-shopping out the ice floes, of course;-)
@String said:
I avoid Myrtle Beach, except to get to some great paddling near Conway.
Myrtle Beach
did long go breach
sanity & peace
by those that stunt
all ocean front
with boardwalk and fry grease
where towel-shovel-pale
in a firework sale
explode signs cross horizon
this gulf of tees
shirted 18-hole sand fleas
skirt true fairway in their disguisin’
in human-to-rat-race
they plead their basket case
“Ease back in ‘low’ country lifestyle!”
but what these sharks ashore
to their bait implore
“Come chum your bucks in feeding frenzy awhile.”
God Bless Huntington Beach State Park, just down the road a spell! (If it’s anything like when I last visited, the summer of '88?)
Huntington Beach is still the same. The Myrtle Beach insanity starts just north of Murrells Inlet. The Pawleys Island/Litchfield Beach area is our family’s favorite place to spend a week in the summer. Very relaxed atmosphere and plenty of paddling .
That’s good to read. Hope to get back there some day, and enjoy the starry night as I come out of those whisperin’ scrub pines round my tent, cross the boardwalk through marsh and dunes, and stand before the Atlantic on the sand.
Up here in Maryland, especially out of Baltimore, it was always about, “Go’n dowen d’Oshun, hun!” Meaning, Ocean City. Never quite connected with me, though. I love the ocean, the beach, the gull cry. But somehow, plunking down a semi-permanent carnival atmosphere which crosses Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes with an Earl Scheib paint shop (a shiny patina on which the rust feeds from beneath) left me feeling like the pretty balloon burst and that It of a clown was trying to pull me down the storm gutter.
That’s why Assateague National Seashore, with its more natural state of grace (in part, meanin’ the methane to the madness derives mostly from the back marshes and pony poop, not the 500,000-per-night Outback and Roadhouse curiously marinated steak dinners served to the seething mob) was the place for me. And instead of some Helliday Inn, we’d camp about 12 miles back inland neath pines and oaks within the Pocomoke State Forest. Although, that, too, is quickly succumbing to the mad rush of motor homed and microwaved padded sites - very few tent sites being left these days, as they don’t bring the bang-for-the-buck to the state’s DNR/Park Service. Yes sir, what with every inch of shoreline and sandspit cry’n out for some McMansion to plop down its millions in hurricane fodder, it truly is getting hard to find a mid-to-south Atlantic shorebreak where one might stand peacefully a moment or two.
But then, I digress, and we were supposed to be springin’ into Spring! The tiger swallowtails were dancing across mine and Moby’s favorite Patapsco riverright beach bend this past Sunday. That’s gotta be two-to-three weeks ahead of their normal appearance time. Now, hopefully with a wee bit of April Showers, we’ll not only get some of that flower uplift they rhyme about, but also perhaps some anti-frictive rock cover to these channels I thread. The gel coat on the '91 Explorer’s keel line is getting a right bit scarce.
@canoeswithduckheads said:
Rookie’s midst the bergy bits,
just off Little Traverse Light,
where she harbors point that to spring dis joint
she’s gonna need a few more nights.
Am honored by the poetry! <3
Yup, a few more nights. . .one more smackdown coming in this evening: six to 12 inches of (wet) snow, winds gusting to 45, then a sweet and sunny 56F Saturday and 65F Sunday.
It’s too early for leaves on the trees, but in just the last day, the grass suddenly got a lot greener, and last night was the first time this year that I’ve heard chorus frogs in the marsh that’s half a mile from my house (heard 'em from my house, not by taking a walk down there, and it’s always nice when their little voices carry that far).
Grass? What’s that?
In Maine it’s that 2.5 oz. bi-weekly prescription you receive for the muscle spasms and chronic intractable pain acquired from a lifetime of geographically indulging one’s self with 6-1/2 month cycles of seemingly ceaseless snow removal.
Come to think of it, the Inuit ought to be able to out-Jamaican the Jamaicans! “T’ain’t no ting, Nanook my mannn!”
@canoeswithduckheads said:
Come to think of it, the Inuit ought to be able to out-Jamaican the Jamaicans! “T’ain’t no ting, Nanook my mannn!”
Two Inuits are paddling a tandem kayak. The paddler in the stern takes out a hibachi charcoal stove and starts cooking his fresh caught lunch on the boat’s deck, hoping also to warm the cockpit up. The stove burns its way through the middle of the boat, splitting the tandem in two and swamping the Inuit’s in the ice ridden sea.
–It just goes to show you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
Ba-dump-bump!
P. Diddy’s Post-Steeler-Playoff-Loss Queen City Bound Lament
(or The Last Unriddled Wine of Bonot Noir and Inglenook - Those Whom Hibachi Their Boat In the Traditional Half-ass Hot-seat Manner)
inza ice-riddens seaz
yo bo hitza pits, berg,
whenz ta rivuhs runz rightz thruzit
yo bo aintz ohi ozitz desurvz
Da-dum-bump
@canoeswithduckheads said:
P. Diddy’s Post-Steeler-Playoff-Loss Queen City Bound Lament
(or The Last Unriddled Wine of Bonot Noir and Inglenook - Those Whom Hibachi Their Boat In the Traditional Half-ass Hot-seat Manner)inza ice-riddens seaz
yo bo hitza pits, berg,
whenz ta rivuhs runz rightz thruzit
yo bo aintz ohi ozitz desurvzDa-dum-bump
Last night at 3am winter tried to reassert itself. At 3am it was pouring, the lightening was lighting up the sky with attendant thunder and howling wind.
Reminded me of an early spring Colorado camping trip.
Cold front meet warm wet air from the Gulf.
Sunny and very windy now. Temp in the 40s next 2 nights. 70s by Sunday.
Must be Spring!
Last night at 3am winter tried to reassert itself. At 3am it was pouring, the lightening was lighting up the sky with attendant thunder and howling wind.
Reminded me of an early spring Colorado camping trip.
Cold front meet warm wet air from the Gulf.
Sunny and very windy now. Temp in the 40s next 2 nights. 70s by Sunday.
Must be Spring!
Spring is sprung
in little traps
with thunder claps
as weather maps
winter unstrung
Spring shall rise
on winds that seek
a drop from peaks
and rise in creeks
unclouded skies
Spring shall smile
in petalled bloom
which like corn broom
sweeps dusty room
with warmth to guile
(for the Cummings and goings of the mud- luscious puddle-wonderful)
@string said:
Last night at 3am winter tried to reassert itself. At 3am it was pouring, the lightening was lighting up the sky with attendant thunder and howling wind.
Reminded me of an early spring Colorado camping trip.
Cold front meet warm wet air from the Gulf.
Sunny and very windy now. Temp in the 40s next 2 nights. 70s by Sunday.
Must be Spring!
String-O, that ain’t winter reasserting itself to me–This is…
Why do you think my grandfather moved from Chicago to Central Florida when it was mostly wilderness?
Wise man that gramps!