Right around this half way mark, we've decided to
really take you folks with us along this nature ride. We've been
making swift progress, but have always stopped a little bit along
the way to check out folks and fauna.
North Carolina
was green and lush, and the water lightened from a swampy,
blackish soup to a greyish blue.
I'm not much of
the bird watching type, but the assortment of winged creatures
along the waterway brought out the Land's End in me. 
Sometimes, we
would see eagles atop of the tallest trees, in their lookout
nests...
Other times, the
birds would find a more convenient spot to build their home. Thank you for the free real estate!
Just in case any
of you thought I was joking about baking my own bread, I invite
you to come aboard and personally sample some of my recent rye
recipe... 
This guy
certainly approves of it. (Then again, Achim isn't too hard to please foodwise. Left to his own devices, he makes hummus and cheese sandwiches. Is that perhaps a gourmet specialty I don't know about?)
Why else could he be smiling? Could it be the amazing speed and agility of our resurrected diesel engine Beaudoin?
After 14 years of
abuse, Beaudoin's exhaust pipe never seems to get exhausted with
the hour after hour of trudging against the winds, the currents
and floating objects... 
Yes floating
objects, such as this here log. That is a log, isn't it? I'm sure
of it, aren't you? Hey, wait a minute... or is it an...
Well, there she
is, Allison! These pics simply don't capture her size, which we
reckoned to be about 14 feet. 
Sure is different
when you see gators from the boat instead of in a zoo...
And who would
have thought that we would see so many dolphins traveling along
the waterway with us? Guess there's not enough room in the ocean
for all of them. Or maybe the fish are better trapped here. 
Now that the
Carolinas are almost water under the bridge (Hilton Head is less
than a day away from Georgia), we hope to have you along for the
last leg of our ride before we hit Florida. See y'all!