the circuitous route to the Atlantic shore

This is my room at the Pelican Retreat House in Salter Path, North Carolina. The link is down below where the links live. It's part of the Trinity Conference Center which I found by Google slogging my way through various Episcopal diocesan websites. My room is called St. Hilda and the waves are so loud at night I don't want to fall asleep because I am so enraptured hearing them. I've driven over 3,000 miles to hear the sound of the waves breaking, a memory from my childhood growing up in Venice Beach. When I walked into my room, my heart leapt and I cried. 

Yes, I realize that as a Berkeley resident I am about an hour and a half from the Pacific. I like sharing the idea that I felt like going to the beach, turned around 180-degrees and hit the road. No, not this ocean; that ocean.

Getting here I had a less than graceful encounter with what had at the time seemed like a great idea: Heading to the Coast from the Atlanta area, spending the night north of Charleston, South Carolina (to avoid resort mayhem) and then meandering my way up Hwy. 17 to these lower Outer Banks. I took goofy silly back routes to pass through Denmark, as one of my Roswell friends is half-Danish. I landed at a reasonably cute and unremarkable Jameson Inn in Georgetown, adjacent to a huge bridge and a fog-shrouded bog. I wanted wifi, a nice bed and palatable coffee after I arose. Check. I headed out after a leisurely morning and slammed head-on into a really old, dilapidated billboard living in the nether reaches of my mind. Why I thought that driving up the coast would be something out of a 1962 TV commercial, with big ole cars and a sea breeze blowing.... I don't know. It was bumper to bumper traffic. It was one of my worst city-fried, claustrophobic nightmares. After crawling 35 miles in 90 minutes while what might've resembled my patience dribbled into a crumb-scattered corner of my messy Honda, I'd had enough. Another 140 miles of that was not something I was willing to gamble on, so I drove an extra 100 miles inland and staggered into the Point of Arrival at Trinity after another 8-hour driving day rather than a leisurely 4-1/2 one. Sometimes I can seamlessly shift out of expectations into life on life's terms. Yesterday was not one of those days. 

It's worth it being here. I jogged on the beach this morning, hot and muggy before 9 am. I saw pelicans, and small planes from a local airport. I eyed the seashells and saw a ghost crab dart back into its burrow. I'll sniff around for some friendly adult supervision and splash in the water. I hear the rip current danger is low today.