15 May: Holden beach to TopSail Island

Left Holden  Beach for Topsail Beach (life is a beach - not so).  Easy drive to Topsail - really is an island with a high connecting bridge on either side.  Stopped off along the way at the Lion King - see it hiding behind the bush for provisions.

Surf City campground is a classic beach RV camp.  Been in the family for over 50 years, the old guy still runs the place and the sons do all the work.  Everyone stays on the site, and the best was no computers... they still use the old lines book to manage the bookings.  I bet they do their accounts by hand as well.

Beautiful beach to walk on with a few weird things I had not seen before.  They look like young clam-like shells that live in the wave wash area of the beach.  When the wave washes over, they pop out and as soon as it pulls back, they burrow in as far as possible under the sand until the sand hardens and they stop.  Next wave, repeat...

The other thing we saw were sand hoppers/sand fleas.  It must be the time of year, but there were millions in the water.

Headed down to the pier on Monday night for a beer.  There were some waves and a few surfers out - some very good ones, but unfortunately it was too far to carry my board, so I stuck with having a few beers.

Also experienced the moon eclipse and extra large king tides at Topsail. 

Apparently Topsail Island, and specifically the northern part where I was, is known for picking up shark teeth on the beach.  

I asked a picker upper what they looked like and stuck gold.  BIG enthusiast - had 2 velvet bags, 1 for the normal stuff and the other with over 20 shark teeth - from a real large looks like a shark tooth to a few triangular black stones that he swore was 100million year old fossilized teeth.  The black teeth definitely have a definite shine to them and are not shells.  Naturally as he walked away he went 'Oh, here is one' and picked up a small black stone and gave it to me - thereby condemning me to spending the rest of my time there looking for @#$)(*8)$)* shark teeth.

So fun observation for Linda....

I was sitting watching the Sanderlings scrounge for sand fleas. 

Then a crow (of which there are many that have adapted to beach living) started following a specific piper - probably to steal anything they catch.  The sanderling then promptly walked away from the water and tucked his head under his wing signalling no more catching for now.  The crow, being somewhat miffed, started doing exactly what the sanderlings do - run down the beach after the retreating wave pecking into the sand to see if they can find anything.  This one on the second run, actually caught a sand flea - nearly got washed away by the next wave, but actually got his own dinner.  Now this is not normal crow (or the local North Carolina variety - I think they are called something else) behavior, but was fascinating to see.  When the crow flew away, the sanderling started hunting again.

Best part of the Topsail week was that Gina drove down for a sleep over on Wednesday night. Had a great time and went to a local fish restaurant for dinner.  Thanks for coming.

So this was the start of what I envisioned traveling would be - wake up early, go for a swim, do some body surfing, do some work and maybe swim again over lunch and then head out to a pub to listen to a local band and have a beer or 2.