Yesterday we went to grab a few groceries at the Piggly Wiggly near our campground. Then we decided to drive over to Emerald Isle and drove the whole length of it over to Morehead City. We stopped at a Ben and Jerry's right away where Anna loved the cows on the walls, and then on the other end of the island stopped at an Ace Hardware to pick up a few things. On the north side of the bay we stopped at a visitor's center, checked out the water, and chatted with the guy staffing the place. He recommended a yacht salesperson down in Wilmington so maybe we will meet up with him.
Back at the campground we set about making some repairs and cooking supper. First up was the left taillights of the trailer which happened to be working at that moment, so we moved on to the fridge. The 120V switch had melted one of its terminals loose so once that was replaced we had a working fridge in the camper again. We still need to get the 12V part of it working though. Then we watched a movie and had a great supper of creamy chicken wild rice soup along with chips and salsa and some sangria given to us at the farewell party in Rosemount (thanks Mike and Jo!).
Today we met Ken from Neptune Yacht Sales at the New Bern Grand Marina. We looked at four boats there.
- -1999 Hunter 340 - liked the cockpit, very small v-berth, no separate shower, only two winches, generally good
- -2000 Hanse 371 - Aaron could not stand comfortably inside
- -2002 Beneteau 361 - Very nice front access fridge plus separate top loading freezer, separate shower from bathroom, white pleather cushions inside, electric windlass, four winches, large v-berth, debatable quality of aft cabin, very nice cockpit, many windows and almost all of them opened for ventilation too (Anna loves this one)
- -1982 Morgan Out Island 416 - center cockpit, ketch-rigged, has solar panels and dingy davits, very wide and very long (too big?), dark (cozy?) inside…lots of dark wood, tons of storage inside, aft cabin with own bathroom, no walk through transom so would be difficult to get Louise on board (Aaron loves this one)
After we finished looking at the boats we debated taking a free ferry ride for fun but the timing didn't work out. So we drove back to the campground and on the way Anna researched some campgrounds in Wilmington and booked us at the KOA there. At the camper we ate sandwiches, packed up, and drove the 1.5 hours or so to the new campground. The new campground is glorious compared to the previous one. Drinkable water, dog park, laundry, friendly neighbors, level camp site, free coffee in the morning, swimming pool (Anna was sad that it was not open, and the staff laughed at us when we asked, because "this morning the temperature started with a 3!"), etc.
We spent about an hour at the dog park and Louise played a lot with a boxer named Luke. Luke was about 10 months older than Louise and played very well with Louise so she is exhausted now. We talked a lot to his owner who had a house nearby that had about 1 foot of water flood his house so he was staying at the campground while it was repaired. He recommended many things to do, places where boats are, and things to eat. We had some Japanese food and now are back at the camper to research where we want to go tomorrow. No appointments are set up so I guess we will just crash some marina sales offices!