Spending a Lazy Day in Bow-fort, NC

It's not pronounced "Bee-yew--fort".  That would be Beaufort,  South Carolina.  It's "Bow-fort", North Carolina..

Beaufort is a nice little town, population about 4,300.  I like small towns.  After living in Stamford, Connecticut for a few years and dealing with the hustle and bustle of a city, this is a welcome pace.  Beaufort is now on our list of "We could live here" places, along with Annapolis and Belhaven.

Part of the reason of our cruise down the eastern seaboard is to find a place to settle down.  Upstate New York has its attractions, such as affordable health insurance and a beautiful summer, spring, and fall... but then it has winter.  As I write this at 6 AM on Sunday, it's -9 degrees in Gloversville.  It's 42 here in Beaufort.  Beaufort wins.

It's much warmer here than, say, Annapolis, which is not too far north.  It's 32 there.  Much better than Gloversville, but not as good as Beaufort.  Beaufort wins again.  Part of the reason for Beaufort being warm is latitude, of course, but it's also because the gulf stream is close here.  Look at the color of the water in this pic of a loon below.

See the light blueish-green color?  No?  Look again.

You can click on the photo to make it larger, by the way.  We have lots of loons here.  They swim and dive all around us.

We took a short walk around town on Saturday.  Beaufort is a small town and it doesn't take long to see most of it.  We found that many of the homes date from the 1700s and 1800s.

I love the gingerbread on the house above.  The house below is in the museum.

Many homes here are not in the museum, but have plaques on the front like the one above does.  It also seems that people in Beaufort take pride in their homes...  check out the sculpted bears in the pic below.

There is a very old cemetary here, a very picturesque one.

I guess it's not a cemetary.  It's an old burying ground.  I'm not sure what the difference is.

The gates were locked, so no one could get in.  Or out.

We had to look in through the fence.

Beaufort is a nice place.  We haven't visited the maritime museum yet, and today isn't forecast to be the best of days, and there's football play offs today as well, so we may just stay put.  One of the nice things about cruising is not being on a schedule, and since I've declared that we're officially in the south, I think we might stay put today.  Why take chances?  What if we went down the line and got out of TV reception range and missed the play offs?  That would be foolhardy.

See the color of the water?  Life is good.  Very good.