The title says it all…Connie’s broke.

She started feeling poorly Thursday afternoon…coughing and a bit of temperature but just took some extra doses of the drugs she takes to combat her inner ear problems…they’re essentially cold medicine and help keep her eustachian tubes open so her ears will drain. After coffee and breakfast she decided to just HTFU and get along with life as she wouldn’t feel good no matter whether she was sitting at home or going on a hike.

Our day originally consisted of 3 short hikes of about a mile each but we decided to just go on 2 of them that were close together and closer to the rig than the third one was…so we headed out to the Tideland Recreational T rail in the Croatan National Forest just northeast of the base. We got there and the gate was locked with a keep out, no vehicles authorized sign. We started researching why it might be closed on their web site but a guy drove up with a dumpster he was delivering…turned out there was construction down in the campground area where we would have been parking. So…no hike for us there…and we headed out to our second destination which was the Emerald Isle Nature Woods trail. It was only a couple of miles from the first location but was over the bridge to Emerald Isle. We found the parking lot and headed out on a beautiful day…her coughing was acting up a bit and she was finding it hard to breathe well…so we just finished out the 1.3 mile loop back to the parking area.

Along the way we did get a couple of photos of the area. First up we spotted a bunch of Blue Jays which kept flying from the tree over the car to one across the parking lot and back…we had never seen them flocking together before and it took us awhile to identify them as the little crest on the back of the head wasn’t as visible as it usually is.

We spotted this Canada Goose and didn’t realize there was the egret/heron wading in the background until Neil processed the photo later.

A shot of the marsh looking out towards the bridge to the mainland followed by an oyster bed visible right off of the canoe launch since it was low tide. The canoe launch was different from anything we had seen before…instead of being a pier type thing it had a solid ramp you could put the canoe down on, get in and then slide down some rollers into the water…maybe it was because the path to the ramp was designated as a handicapped trail so they put in the canoe ramp to make it easier to get from a wheelchair into the canoe. The oyster bed is a pretty small one due to the small size of the sandbar it’s on top of.

When we got back to the parking lot we stopped and had lunch then talked about whether to drive the 10 miles more to the hike we had originally passed on…but Connie had had enough fun for the day so we headed home. As we exited the hike area we turned towards the island rather than back to the bridge in search of a seafood market…we wanted some fish for dinner. A bit down the road we found Captain Willis’s Seafood…so we went in and picked up a couple of trigger filets for dinner. After that we headed home and took a nap the rest of the afternoon.

Dinner was the aforementioned trigger…added some Bam! (Emeril’s Essence homemade spice mixture) and some corn meal to the bag and shook them around then gave them a quick fry in the pan. To go along with the fish Neil made some couscous laced with goodies…Andouille sausage, onions, dates, cocoanut, and toasted pecans. It was pretty good but needed a little more spice than he put in so we’ll remedy that when we have the leftover couscous for lunch. The fish was excellent with homemade cocktail sauce.

After that it was just TV for us and feeling miserable for Connie until bedtime. She got up this morning and still feels bad…even a little worse so Neil’s taking care of her today…although she does have to work for an hour to have her monthly phone call with her boss but after that she’ll just vegetate.

A couple of quickies for you though…the first one is just a teaser for our upcoming trip to the hinterlands…although this shot is from a lake in Jasper National Park in BC we’ll get a lot of similar ones on the way to/from Alaska and other points northwest. The second one is clearly somebody that stole Neil’s license tag…this is one of his favorite sayings over the years.

Cyas.