Schmitz Family Est. 1999

I adventured away all by my lonesome for two whole nights!! I was in desperate need of a BREAK! I'm often wishing I could go somewhere or saying I should so..... I finally picked a date and just did it, and boy am I glad I did and boy will I do it again!!

I left home on a Friday after Scott got off work. The drive to Beaufort (Bo-fort) is about 1 hour.

I stayed at a very nice Bed & Breakfast, called, The Seaport Inn. The owners were very sweet. Mary is an artist so she runs the B&B and has an on site studio that she works out of as well. I spent more than a couple of hours sitting on the upper level porch reading my book. Someday, I will have a second story deck, how perfect...I got to enjoy being outside, but not a soul knew I was up there!!

This was my room. Sailor Jack's Room, is what it was called. Who is Sailor Jack, you ask? I have no clue!

Early on Sat. morning after a wonderful breakfast by Ms. Mary, I took this boat ferry over to Shackleford Banks to go shelling and to see some wild horses. It was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!! However, it felt a bit like Gilligan's Island as the ferry Capt. said, "it's roughly a 3 hour tour"!!!

As we rode in the ferry we first passed Carrot Island and saw these two wild beauties getting a morning snack.

Once we got to Shackleford Island we followed the guide and tracked the horses. We found a group of three first. There are roughly 125 wild horses on this island. They are wild, but used to people, as you can see we could get fairly close to them. Although they are wild they are closely monitored by the State of North Carolina. You'll notice they have bleach brands on there hind quarters.

Beautiful animal, truly.

We kept on tracking and passed these men who were raking clams. It didn't look fun.

As we came over the dune we spotted these beauts.

As we got closer and they noticed us they turned their backs to us...playing shy, I guess.

It was hot that day.

We traveled further and some decided they'd seen enough horses and went shelling. The guide and I and a few others decided to keep going and check in on a group that was a bit further up the beach. This horse was my favorite with that amazing blond hair. She was gorgeous.

This one was checking us out as we turned back.

Here's the ocean side of the island. It was near low tide by the time we got to this side.

Perfect for shelling!

It was shelling like I'd never experienced. You couldn't help but step on them they were EVERYWHERE!! Kids were pulling full sized conch shells out of the water as we walked along. It was cool! I was on a mission to get some bigger ones for the kiddos to see because I knew size would matter to them and pieces of orange shell to go in a jar for our master bathroom that has very orange walls. Mission accomplished!

I watched this little guy catch his lunch! I also saw a good sized blue crab in the water as I was walking ankle deep looking for shells. Cool!!

Me one the beach. Picture taken for me by the Guide.

On the way back we saw a couple shrimping boats.

These flags spell out Beaufort in Naval flag code. A little know fact about Beaufort, is that it is the home town of the astronaut that piloted the space shuttle Challenger.

After my island trip I showered and clean up and ate a wonderful lunch dock side at a restaurant while a live band played music. Peaceful! Then I toured the North Carolina Maritime Museum. They had lots of Blackbeard memorabilia. Blackbeard the Pirate lived in Beaufort for a time in 1997 it was proved that Blackbeard's Ship, Queen Anne's Revenge, had sunk in the Beaufort Inlet, just 20 feet below the water. Interesting stuff!!

I strolled the town and took some fun pictures. I visited a very old cemetery that has tombs from hundreds of years ago.

I couldn't help but take interest in this.....life after death, came to mind,,,,,, as did, in death, there is life......

Lots of tiny tombs of babies and young kids......so sad.

More pics of tooling around town. I was able to go in every shop and look around in peace. I didn't know what to do with myself! I wasn't worried about getting a double stroller in the stores either!! Just me, me, me!

This was the front porch of one of the antique stores I went into. I love those rockers.

On Sunday. I took a trip a bit north to see Cape Lookout. This is what you can see from the main land at Harker's island. It wasn't enough for me....

..........so I paid $15 and took another boat ferry about 20 minutes to the light house.

Here she is....Cape Lookout and the keeper's quarters.

The lower floor is a museum of sorts telling the story of the lighthouse. The upstairs is an actual living quarters. An elderly couple lives there and they "keep" the lighthouse and run the store/gift shop on the island. I asked her if they take the ferry each day and that's when she said they live on the upper level of the keeper's quarters. She said they go back once a week for groceries.....and, get this....they are volunteers! Seriously, that's dedication.

The waters off the shore of North Carolina are reffered to as the grave yard of the Atlantic as it contains many shoals, which are sandbars. Often times ships didn't notice these shallow waters until it was to late and perished. This is why there are so many light houses necessary on the coast. The first one built here at Cape Lookout was too short, it's location was changed and it was made taller, then was later painted with it's daymark, the diagonal checker board. Every lighthouse has a day mark that helps passing ships differenciate them from other light houses. Each also has a light that helps ships that are passing in the night locate their distance from land. No two lighthouse lights blink at the same interval....Capelook Out's light blinks every 15 seconds.

I didn't climb it...it was closed...otherwise I would have....NOT!

Cape Lookout is the only lighthouse in the United States that looks different depending the direction you are sailing. In the log that ship captains keep to determine which lighthouse is which there are two pictures for Cape Lookout, one showing the white diamonds, the other the black.

I asked a kind stranger to snap my picture. I was hot that day....I didn't dress for a spontaneous trip in a boat to tour a lighthouse, but I'm glad I did it!!