This sign hung beneath the beach house: GONALOFABIT. The house's name? The word appeared nowhere else, in the house or on paper.
I'm going to remember this year's beach trip as one of running into the ocean. Every time I went into the ocean, I ran in. The first day we were there, Rob joke-suggested doing so, and I took him up on it. Run, run, high-step, high-step, topple, let waves fall on me, freeze, stand, swim.
I'm not thrilled with the way this picture turned out, but I could not be happier with the way the dish and the rest of our meal went tonight at Blue Moon Beach Grille. We typically eat out the night before we leave the beach, and neither of our two favorite places from past years were available. One was hosting a wedding reception, and another location had changed hands. So, I was putting in charge of finding a new spot.
At the top of TripAdvisor's Outer Banks rankings was Blue Moon. The reviews were numerous, recent and claimed it was the beach's new best restaurant. High praise! And you can now us among the faithful.
All the reviews said the people there couldn't have been nicer, and I'm now thinking science would agree. With rain closing the outside tables, the hostess took our number — first time we've ever seen that on the Outer Banks — and we killed time nearby at Kitty Hawk Kites, where my family has had fun killing time for about two-plus decades now. Not bad. After the call came and returned, the waiter was welcoming, hit every mark, was inquisitive about the dishes, and had me thinking about key lime pie all the drive home even though I had less than zero room for it. A Cooper man and his desserts… My dad guessed it was a family-run place, with the staff seemingly pros instead of summer help. He was right. Scott and Melissa Shields, so well done. And the food–
What you see here is Angel's Delight. "Shrimp and blue crab, sautéed in a light white wine sauce, with vine-ripened tomatoes, fresh green onion, roasted red peppers, garlic, and basil. Finished with whole butter and served over angel hair pasta and topped with parmesan cheese." Are there more ways to make me happy? (Only if I can fit in dessert…) Flavors bounced all the smart ways, and though I filled up, never felt heavy. The rest of the family said the same about theirs. A long way from the beach's usual sea platters. Lead-ins had the same precision. The calamari was in a white wine, cherry pepper and lemon butter sauce. I'm not sure I've had better. Even the Caesar brought bacon and onion to the tastes. Among the dishes, not a wrong move.
I know the post sounds overly effusive. But when you've been going somewhere on vacation for two-plus decades and seen the island's evolution, it's thoroughly exciting to find the new best restaurant in a hidden strip mall facing neither the old main road nor the new one.
Glad to see business was bustling tonight. We'll be back next year.
Early Thursday morning, the family fishermen went into the sea. They took this adventure every year. Some years were better than others.
This year was an other year. This year, they caught three acceptable flounder, several dozen flounder that were all a quarter of inch to two inches too short and several pufferfish. A pufferfish, as one of the first mates on the fam's rented boats demonstrated, could be rubbed on its belly and then bounced like a basketball. Pufferfish were edible — but only the parts that weren't poisonous. The family fisherman left them behind. Cousin Matt, who would be the person to cook any fish taken home, didn't want the added responsibility of not killing the relatives.
Still! We bought shrimp and scallops and had our usual feast…
Rain has been pouring here for two or three hours, our first rain this week. Maybe the downpour started earlier, but I was pretending to sleep then.
Wake, hear the drops earnest on the shingles, wonder about my sandals or what else beneath the house (open among its pilings for hurricane visits), give those feelings over to the beach, and return to sleeping, my pillowcase over a stranger's brand-name pillow.
But the sun has a chance today. The sky is a clear yellow just above the horizon and just blue above the cloud line, up 45 or 60 degrees. Even as I write, this roof quiets. Stumbling, I cover my head and the camera with yesterday's paper to take a picture from the porch. In all: Beach, sea, the yellow, clouds, the blue, collectively nowhere in proportion with this page.
The rest of the house wakes. My mom notices the blue over the ocean, but my dad says the storm is coming from the west, still coming to the ocean. My mom grows concerned with an open window in a room we haven't used and is barely a room at all, just walls and felt over a deck. She opens the room and goes for paper towels, and I curse invisible mosquitoes flying in.
But I was lost before this minute. I just hid it better from my heartbeat and blood pressures. Otherwise, I wouldn't have woken so early and sought something beyond rest.
On the one beach night where my mom and dad and aunt and uncle — the greatest generation, which I can say because they won't see this post for days — go out to eat, the Cooper and Brinker cousins, more than 30 of us now across two generations, are left to our own devices.
This means: Pizza Hut take-out, beer, talking on the deck until the sun goes down, tubs of ice cream, Pictionary, and loud, loud charades. It is really very wholesome except for the pizza-charade-fueled violence.
Best blog concept of the night: As Tim blogs from American Samoa, I blog an alternative, folktale-driven version. Lots of conch-blowing.
Anyway. Onto the pictures. It appears to be a friendly game…
Until IT BEGINS.
Heartwarming moment after this: He still wanted his mom on his team.
At the other end of the table, high-stakes Sequence.
"Bad breath."
I've said it before, but turning it on just once this week made me wish I'd driven more around the island this year. Where, don't know. After arriving, I didn't want to go anywhere else. From Cracker's new Turn on, Tune in, Drop out with Me (video) today, I got good lost for once.
I'm shopping in town for our homemade Agrarian fortress
You're texting: Corian, granite or tile kitchenette in the gun nest?
Well we'll find a little meadow high up in the Cascades
Baby we won't ever come down
Turn on, tune in, drop out, give up with me.
I love the beach and distrust it. I call the trip the most relaxing week of my year each year, and that's true. But relaxation and satisfaction are two different things, and to a great extent each year, the week leaves me wanting. As much as I may escape here, as much as I may hate to go home at the end of the week, as often as I may threaten to leave whatever job for some seasonal island work, there are no answers to be found when there are no true responsibilities, there are no people, there are no choices. There's nothing, really, to be gained or lost.
So, important people in life, I've brought them here or I've kept them away. I've hidden the escape factor or laid it out there. No matter. The situations have ended up the same. Happiness at home or away turns out to have nothing to do with place and everything to do with people and choices. Even if choices are far off, there's a certain management that can be done to treat the possibilities fairly and openly. There's a responsibility in life to care before you ever get in the car or arrive at the big bridge and fruit stands. They're locations, and that's all.
I've put too much faith in those locations, I know. Whatever ways I can hope to come here and then run magic or fight fate, the beach freezes the skinny from the ocean and burns the pale off the sand. There's so much beauty around, but participation, as wonderful as it may be for a time, isn't conversion. If you want someone else, want someone else. Underneath the pier, the best place to go, turn around and come back, the tide's doing the same, in another direction. Has to be more?
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