Days 65-67: March 23-25, 2023

Tonia and Boris had to work so I headed into town with Steve, Barbara, Mayli and the kids. The walk to town was just about a mile so a nice stroll. It also passed most of the historical items listed on the map.

We arrived at the information center, and I gave Michael a tutorial on how to play checkers. I was able to prevail. 🙂 However, he vowed to beat me in a rematch later.

Touring didn’t last very long. There was a joke earlier in the day that if it wasn’t for Mayli’s planning that all we’d see were bars. Well, Steve got hungry, so we had to stop at the pub for 6-dollar burgers and 2-dollar hotdogs. That led us to the brewery next door and finally a Mexican restaurant for chips n salsa and margaritas where Tonia joined after work.

The stop in Beaufort was pre-planned to be longer due to storms passing thru with high winds. If you’ve been following, wind has been a common theme for our trip.

Day 2 was one of productivity. A nice walk, a jaunt to the hardware store and couple other quick stops thanks to the marina’s courtesy car—a super-nice perk, and then a stroll into town to get lunch with the peeps.

After an excellent lunch at Moonrakers, we popped across the street to the maritime museum, which had some great exhibits about the area, sea life, and well-known pirate legend Black Beard. He was said to have lived in Hammock House in Beaufort and he also ran his ship aground offshore from what’s now Fort Macon State Park.

We wandered around town a bit more, stopped at an ice cream/coffee/wine shop for refreshments, and hit up Big Daddy convenience store for a couple quick items on our way back.

The last full day in town, the guys and kids headed to the local arcade for the afternoon. It had some good vintage games though was kind of like going to Chucky Cheese.

Meanwhile, Tonia and Mayli decided to check out Fort Macon State Park. The fort was well maintained with some interesting history to peruse. They then hiked a 3-mile trail through the park and surrounding beach bluffs. The little bit of rainy misty weather did not deter them and they had a lovely time.

We found out the restaurant upstairs at Town Creek Marina was supposed to be pretty good…so much so that we couldn’t get in. We called in for a takeout dinner and they accommodated us, and the grown-ups ate on Lil Sudden. And, yes, it was quite tasty!

Departure morning: We managed to get some extra walks in while at dock, which was quite nice. On our last morning in Beaufort, the two of us popped back into town to get a morning beverage (don’t tell Steve) and cookies from Cru.

On the way back, we walked through the Old Burying Grounds cemetery, which has quite the history with many graves from the late 1700s through 1800s. This cemetery even had a brochure about some of the notable gravestones, including a curious grave that Mayli gave a heads-up on was the Girl in a Barrel of Rum (the one adorned with toys; see description photo below).

We then made our way back to the boat passing the former train depot, an artist’s house, and a St. Pat’s chicken. It was time to hit the seas again!

Check out the next blog entry for the day’s quite exciting voyage to Oriental, NC.