Wilmington to Camp LeJeune


First day traveling with Jeff and Wende.  They will be with us until we reach Norfolk.  

Left Wilmington this morning after some grocery shopping and filling up with water.  

Wilmington is a great town.  Wish I had more time here.  

It's downtown is full of little shops and restaurants and it doesn't feel very 'small town'.   There was a sold out rap concert yesterday within earshot of the marina.   Not my kind of music but the town was full because of it...

We cruised past the battleship and back down the Cape Fear river to the cut crossing to the intracoastal.   Lots of shallow water.   A large fishing boat got stuck right before we got to Carolina Beach, saving us the indignity....  

So we noticed the stuck boat, slowly (very slowly) meandered around it and got through without issue.  SeaTow was there towing someone and mentioned the channel markers had been moved by the dredge that was there working.  Brilliant.  

We also saw a number of abandoned boats stranded by hurricanes.  

And a tiny party island. (Too early for the party) 

The scenery in this part of North Carolina is simply stunning.  Lots of barrier islands with channels in and out and dune areas covered by million dollar houses.   (Technically I don't think a million dollars buys any houses here..  We did see an empty lot for 1.8 million though).  Crazy expensive.  Cool little towns. 

And military.   Lots of planes flying over.  Some in formation.     

We made good time until we met a barge at one of the bridges.  A barge that must have been a half mile long.  I've never seen anything like it..  long like a train.  It was moving a dredge and it's pipes all connected in and they had 3-4 support vessels pushing on various parts of the train to keep it from getting into the bridge or other traffic....

We are anchored tonight right by Camp LeJeune (technically we are in the USMC camp as they run training drills right here at the boat ramp next to us and do live fire and flare targeting here).   I doubt we will see anything tonight (it's Friday night and they mostly do it week days/nights)

68 miles today.  Tomorrow will be shorter....
Beautiful sunset tonight.   Almost every day now I sit on the boat and think how blessed we are to live this life at this time....  I miss home but enjoy every minute of almost every day....

Dinner was Tilapia and mixed veggies.   It was awesome.   


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