Recent Travels (Snorkeling and Baldhead Island)

Lighthouse on Baldhead

I got back from North Carolina a little before midnight last night.  It was a long ways to drive while arguing over music with a teenager who reminded me that next year, she could drive and I could sleep.  I told her that the thought of that will keep me from sleeping till next year and that I don’t think learner’s permits are valid out-of-state (I maybe wrong, but it was a good story).  We finally compromised on listening to a book and I was surprised that she was willing to listen to Wallace Stegner’s The Big Rock Candy Mountain.  We got through about half of the book.  In addition to seeing family and exploring colleges (did our guide at Davidson really wear a pressed Polo dress shirt with shorts and flip-flops), we spent lots of time on the beach.  One morning I went snorkeling with my brother at the jetty on the north end of Masonboro Island.  Another day, we went my brother, sister-in-law and niece to Baldhead Island, which sits at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.   It was a nice ride in the boat down the river and back.  My daughter and I also took in a movie, going to see The Hunger Games (a large part of the movie was filmed in North Carolina). 

Beach houses on Baldhead

Back in the late 70s, they started developing Baldhead (you have to take a ferry or boat over).  Before that, the only people who lived on the island were the lighthouse keeper, an occasional garrison.  In the Revolutionary War, the British built a fort on Baldhead to protect their fleet that mostly stayed moored in the mouth of the Cape Fear where they remained a thorn in the Colonies side.  What may have been the first amphibious operation by the American military occurred on the island when the colonies attempted to remove the British.  It was unsuccessful.    During the Civil War, Fort Holmes protected the main (south channel) of the Cape Fear, but when Fort Fisher (which guarded a shallower yet preferred channel used by blockade runners) fell, Fort Holmes found itself cut off and was abandoned.  

Marsh behind Baldhead

The point at Cape Fear

The barrier islands are shifting sand.  Much of Fort Holmes (as is much of Fort Fisher) is now in the Atlantic as the shoreline changes. Of course, those who build houses don't think much about the shifting coastline, but it's a reality and the island shape may change again, come another hurricane.  In front of Baldhead are the Frying Pan Shoals that extend out some forty or fifty miles and causing lots of shipwrecks.

The Fort Fisher/Southport Ferry (as we ran back up the river)

A jellyfish (from my snorkeling expedition)

One of the neat things of the little pocket camera that I got for my trip last year is that it's waterproof up to 25 feet and can be used to snorkel.  The water wasn't that clear the day my brother was out, but we did see a lot of fish (some sizable sheephead and black drum along with lots of pin fish and spot)

That's me on the surface

that's me, underwater

that Sheephead wasn't very photogenic