OBX 2017

For our beach trip this year we returned to Pelican's Perch, the wonderful house we found in Duck last year. The weather this year was a bit unsettled, with lots of thunderstorms, but the temperatures never left the 70's, the water was consistently warm, and the scattered storms generally moved through quickly leaving us plenty of time to enjoy the beach.

We can't have a trip to the Pelican's Perch without having a tournament for the Pelican Cup, and of course Katherine brought plenty of games. The scattered storms meant there was lots of time for games in the house, but also meant that we were maximizing our ocean time when the weather was nice, so we didn't play as much corn hole this year. Nora jumped out to an early lead with a big Yahtzee win the first day, then Elaine came on strong with wins in Crappy Birthday and Tenzi's, and Owen charged ahead with an assortment of wins from Marbles to Memory, but my steady stream of wins capped off with a big Bocci game meant that I got to take home the Pelican Cup this year :-)

The big news for this trip was the completion of the Duck beach nourishment project. Beach nourishment pumps in sand from offshore to extend and protect the beach, and for the Pelican's Perch, it meant that the beach was considerably wider, and when we walked down to to the condos at Barrier Island, we could really see how much of a difference it made, as the beach there had eroded enough that all the umbrellas were packed into a very narrow strip of beach. Interestingly, beach nourishment is one of the climate change adaptation measures for sea level rise that we model in the costal properties model for the CIRA project, though the North Carolina Legislature banned the state from using sea level rise predictions for costal policies. I'm sure there's more to this story...maybe we'll find out when we come back to the Pelican's Perch next summer :-)



(click here for all the pictures)