A Beachy sort of Day

Ah - Coastal living where the brisk sea breeze and sound of the ocean lull you into a hypnotic state where time seems to fly away on seagulls' wings.  Time passes too quickly anyway for those of us past fifty.  Where did they go - those years between fifty and sixty - seems like just yesterday I was forty-nine and then somewhere along the line I hit sixty without even knowing what hit me.

We've opened our seasonal business at the coast again and will pretty much be here for the summer from now on.  It's a long weekend business, so we'll be doing some traveling back and forth which makes time fly by even faster.

We don't work on Sundays, so it's normally a travel day, but we stayed an extra day over this weekend so hubby could go out on his brother's boat today.  Yesterday, we spent a leisurely day just taking in the sights and scents of some of our favorite places.  There's nothing like the smell of the ocean breeze with a hint of salt, seaweed and wet sand.  And of course there's the seafood houses where shrimp boats come in with their catch of the day.  Normally by the time shrimp and fish get to your supermarket, the smell is rather unpleasant, but it's much different when it's fresh off the boat.  One of our favorite places to hang out in our brief moments of leisure time is the Old Ferry Seafood House on the Inter-coastal Waterway at Holden Beach, NC.   The owners are Phil and Anna Robinson - some of the nicest people you've ever met.  If you want fresh local seafood while you're visiting the beach, this is where to buy it.  You'll usually find Anna sitting on the dock with pole in hand and line in water waiting for a flounder to nibble his way into her fish cooler.  Here's a few photos:

A boat tied to the dock

A zoom-in look across to the island side of the waterway at an abandoned seafood house.

The shrimp boats have come in for a day of rest.

The dock side of Old Ferry Seafood.  You can also buy bait for fishing here.

A look up through the workings of the shrimp boat

Anna even prepares and puts on ice the makings of a clam & shrimp lowcountry recipe so all you have to do is put it on the grill.   Nice to have a ready-to cook seafood concoction without having to prepare it yourself.

Here's Anna at the counter / seafood cooler ready to fill your order.

A view out of one of the porthole windows in the seafood house

A bin full of seashells

Aren't these colors peachy beachy keen?

Their guard dog - a sweet little cocker spaniel that just patters ever so softly around on these beautiful clean floors.  I've never seen this place any other way than spotless!

It was a nice day - we went down to the beach and waterway to see the unusually high tide that accompanied the spectacular lunar event - the Super Moon.  We looked the minnow traps and found a few for fishing today and then topped the day off with our guests that arrived on Sunday - hubby's brother and nephew, having a fantastic dinner of a lowcountry boil that included some shrimp we had in the freezer, clams we bought from Old Ferry, fresh corn, new potatoes, Andouille sausage and onions.  A true feast we had - eaten out on the picnic table.  I'll post those pics and the recipe tomorrow.