Elizabeth City Dock, Pasquotank River

Today's activities include a walk for some exercise and dinner with my cousin Greg and his wife Suzette -- they leave in nearby Kitty Hawk and were gracious enough to accept an invitation to come and visit with us.

Staying in a  B&B means someone else serves you breakfast; our hosts prepared and served  us a sumptuous Eggs Benedict breakfast; we were the only guests in the place -- I have to admit it felt both weird and "special" to have them serve us. The food was great and we learned something about them as people (retired from government jobs in the V.A., bought the B&B 10 years ago; took 3 years to fix it up; like to travel a lot -- their B&B income is their travel kitty).

Ready to dig in

After breakfast, I spent some time working on the blog and Sue spent some time paying our bills -- unfortunately, when she downloaded our credit card bill, she quickly realized that there were fraudulent charges on it -- a call to the credit card company confirmed that someone in Louisiana was going hog wild, charging everything from uniforms to fast food meals to our card -- since we both still had our cards in hand, we surmised that someone along the way, probably in Deltaville (the charges started right after Deltaville), had "stolen" our credit card number. After a short discussion, the account was closed and new cards were being "over-night-ed" to us at the B&B.

We then left for a walk, visiting the Albermarle Museum (Elizabeth City is Albermarle's county seat) along the way. The museum is brand new and well done -- it told the county's story in engaging set of exhibits that (literally) walked you through its maritime, railroad and modern eras, with a side trip though its role in slavery (haven for escaped slaves, underground railroad) and the civil war (the union captured it early in the war and eliminated the Dismal Swamp canal as a supply source -- a major blow to the confederacy). It was fun -- brought to life some of the grammar school history that the nuns drilled into me).

The Duke of Albermarle, for whom the county is named

Touring history

Yet another boat exhibit

Other scenes from the walk:

These toadstools were more photogenic than the town

So were these !

Post walk relaxation

Dinner with Greg and Suzette was wonderful -- when Greg and I had first spoken about getting together, he volunteered to try and find a decent restaurant in the area -- his tone was understandably skeptical -- Elizabeth City is not a small place in the middle of nowhere As it turned out, Suzette found a great restaurant, Montero's, within 15 minutes of our boat. The menu was quite varied we all were very pleased with our meals (I has a house specialty, Shrimp & Grits -- sounds plain but the shrimp were fresh, well seasoned and delicious).

Pre-dinner photo op