Lost in Beaufort

After waking up early two mornings in a row, it felt really great to sleep in today. When we got up, Brian had breakfast almost ready. All eight of us again sat down at the table to enjoy an egg casserole (Chili Cheese Egg Puff) and fruit. It was a great start to our day. By mid-morning, Tom and I set out on a bike ride down the Emerald Isle bike path to the west. After four miles, we came to the end of the island, and found a beautiful, wide open beach area. We locked up the bikes and took about an hour to explore the beach and sand bars. I picked up a few more shells to add to my collection before walking back to our bikes.

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After returning to the beach house, Tom continued riding, while I had lunch and got ready to go shopping with Annie and Jill (Wendy decided to hang back and unwind after several stressful and busy days). The ladies drove to Beaufort and arrived around 2:30, and the guys (Tom, Brian, Gord & Carl) arrived around 4:00. We really enjoyed the many different gift shops, while the guys took in the Maritime museum, complete with lots of informative plaques for Tom to read on the history of Blackbeard and other infamous pirates, whaling and other aspects of the area's wildlife. We all met up at Queen Anne's Revenge for drinks before walking over to Beaufort Grocery Co. for dinner. Another tasty (mostly seafood) dinner was enjoyed by all!

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After dinner we walked back down the main shopping street together. Some of the shops were still open so we peeked our heads in to one or two. The town's shops have lots of jewelry and beach wear...something for everyone.

Jill, Annie and I decided to ride back together the same way we had come. Unfortunately, in the dark we had a hard time feeling our way out of town. We ran into several "road closed" and "detour" signs, and our GPS didn't seem to know about the new bridge that had gone in over the past year. So after driving in circles for about 20 minutes, we finally decided to actually follow one of the detour signs. Lo and behold! It took us right out of town and back to the main drag we had been looking for. We had a good chuckle over being "lost in Beaufort," and decided it would make a good title for my next blog post. (Naming my blog posts actually became a sort of game for the whole gang during the week! 😉 )