The Tar Heel Outdoorsman

We shoved off from the Edenton Marina for a cruise across the sound.  Lunch over at Mackey's.  I had yet to go over there since our move up to Northeastern 'Carolina.  Southward we went, through that tannin-stained water of the "Sea of Roanoke," about eight miles to the mouth of Mackey's Creek.   It was a calm early-March day, and it was warmer, a welcome thing compared to the usual cold and breeze of winter and early spring.  The "wind machine," had been turned off.  It sure felt good for my skin to soak up that sun for the first time in a while, too long deprived of Vitamin-D.   It was hard to spot the mouth of the creek, amongst the cypress and their knees and Spanish moss, it's not wide.  But it's deep, deep for a ways, way past the marina.   We grabbed a fried seafood lunch at the marina grill, along with a cold beverage, and after eating way more than my fill, we continued to cruise up the creek.   It's hard to ...

It's a funky place, Wilmington.  A weird mix of beach luxury, old in-town money, yet grittiness of a port city with a blue collar and service economy backbone, and poverty and drugs and violence in the "wrong" part of town, and people who grew up there with roots reaching down through generations of sandy dirt, and now more than ever a mix of "new" people from all over and North and West.   It's a funky river, the Cape Fear, and her sister, the Northeast Cape Fear.  It's sometimes a dirty river---industry, logging, chemicals and heavy metals, fuel, both nearby and upriver, and the sprawling semi-urban and suburban landscape of New Hanover and the quickly developing Brunswick and Pender Counties.  It's an old river, full of history.  From the Native Americans who first called the area home, to the English colonists and the raiding Spanish at Brunswick Town, to the economy of naval stores and tar and pitch and turpentine, to the last port and   "...

Welcome to the ol' Roanoke Rockfish Roller Coaster.  Wait in line for the ramp.  Hop into the line of boats on either side of the main channel.  Drift in line, down, down to Big Rock.  Motor back up.  Hop in line.  Do it again, and again, and again, if the hot sun doesn't fry your skin too much and if the heavy 350 grain line and strong rockfish don't turn your arms to jello.