Caswell Beach, NC (and Bay Area, CA) - Weeks 23 and 24

Our long awaited beach vacation had arrived!  We pulled into Caswell Beach and parked our rig in front of the rental house.  The beach weather was perfect: hot and muggy with a bit of a breeze on the shore.  Our house was flanked by ocean and wetlands, with a family friend's house two doors down.  Our annual pilgrimage to Oak Island/Caswell Beach began twenty-five years ago when my parents joined up with two neighboring families to rent out a beach house for a week in the summer.  When I moved West it became a journey of planes and trains to reach the beach house, but it was always an enjoyable week with family.  Now with a kid in tow, it has been fun seeing him become accustomed to the waves and the relaxed beach house mentality.

Beach view

Wetlands view

This year was a little different.  First of all, we arrived in an RV.  Secondly, we invited our friends to join us for a second week at the beach.  Third, I was jetting off during the first beach week to visit with a close friend who had recently become a mother.

Just as we were settling in, Lukas loving the waves, everyone in full lazy mode, it was time for me to get on a plane.  Off to San Francisco I went, leaving Lukas and Brian to enjoy the beach with the grandparents and our family friends.  I had not been away from my husband and son for more than a few hours over the last two months.  I had not been in a big city for at least six weeks.  And I had been in the South for what felt like a really long time.

California

I arrived in San Francisco without a car reservation.  I hadn't needed reservations anywhere across the country and it seemed silly to make one in SF.  Well, I should have made a reservation because SFO was out of cars.  As in, none of the rental companies at SFO had any cars left at all.  Nor SUVs, or Lincoln Continentals, or anything except ginormous pick-up trucks.  I needed a vehicle, so I had to settle for the truck.  This thing had a large cab with four doors, a full truck bed, and a jake break for towing.  Thank goodness I'd been driving the RV for the last few months or I never could have pulled off driving this monster through San Francisco.

It was wonderful to be in San Francisco and it really felt like home.  The scenery is awesome, the food is quality, and our friends are the best.  The only downsides are the traffic and the crowds.  It took half an hour to get a burrito from Papalote on 24th, but it was really good.  I had better luck at Tartine and Dynamo.  I was determined to eat as much as possible while in SF and store up the food memories for future lean times on the road.

But I did not go to SF to eat.  I was there to meet Finnbar, the son of our wonderful friends Jenesse and Dylan.  Jenesse was extremely helpful and present when Lukas was born, so I felt terrible being out of the area as she entered the world of motherhood.  Even though I only visited for a few days, I hope it helped to have a couple extra hands in the house and some food in the freezer.  As luck would have it, our other great friend from elementary school came to visit at the same time!  It was a reunion centered around Finn, who is really a lovely little boy.  It was amazing how quickly we were sucked into the baby vortex, when suddenly the day would be over and we were not sure where the time had gone.  Between feedings, changing and nap time the days stretch out then disappear.

Daddy

Little Finn

Sarah and Mommy

My visit was over all too soon and I was realizing that I would not see little Finn again until he is four months old.  So much will change in my absence!  I hardly slept that evening between a late night with my wonderful hosts, Dierdre and Zeev, plus the early flight time of six in the morning.  Once I was on the road, all I wanted was to get back to the beach and my family.  Of course there was a cancelled flight and a long delay and I ended up getting to NC hours after my scheduled arrival time.  I did enjoy chatting with folks at the bar and realizing that I knew a little something about their home towns, like Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Louisville, Kentucky.  This trip has certainly opened my eyes to life in the rest of the United States.

Back at the beach, we had a fun day of digging for coquinas (a small bivalve with colorful shells that digs itself into the sand after being unearthed by a wave, or a small child and his mother).  Then our friends began arriving!  Shia, Patrick and Ayla had a worse flight than mine and came without luggage.  The next day Sarah, a mutual friend from junior high, flew in with no problems at all.  The energy in the beach house shot up a few notches as we ran around after children and planned meals or outings.  It was such a treat to have our friends at the beach and we will have to repeat in years to come.

Patrick and Ayla

The girls' afternoon out at the wetlands

It ended up being a very turtle filled week.  On Caswell Beach it is common to encounter a turtle nest which has been marked and covered with netting by the Turtle Watch volunteers.  Loggerheads are the most common species and the eggs have an incubation period of roughly sixty days, depending on weather conditions.  It just so happened that there were three turtle nests within a hundred feet of our boardwalk all ready to hatch.  Shia and Patrick's first night at the beach we saw eighty four turtles hatch out and run down to the ocean.  On Sarah's first night we were able to watch the turtle "boil," where all the turtles erupt from the sand together then race down to the water.  The following night the third nest hatched, but we missed that one.  The fourth night it was time for the volunteers to dig up the first turtle nest that hatched and free any turtle survivors who had not managed to climb out on their own.  They uncovered five turtles from the first night.  When digging up the second nest, they found four live turtles and a couple dead ones.  The dig of the third nest uncovered a ghost crab, which the volunteers proceeded to pound with a shovel since it was certainly to blame for the deaths of a turtle or two.  It is estimated that only one of a hundred hatchlings will survive, which is poor odds indeed.  We may have seen a turtle being picked off by a sea gull just as it entered the water.  Good luck to all our special turtle friends, we hope you will come back to nest on Caswell Beach in thirty years.

Then suddenly our beach vacation from our RV vacation was over.  We readied the motorhome for habitation and drove Shia, Pat and Ayla to the airport.  It was hard to say goodbye to our parents and our friends, knowing that it would be a while before we saw them again.  Luckily we had one more friend to visit in North Carolina, so we set off for Raleigh and embarked on the next leg of our US adventure.