Blue sky and sunshine energizes me.  Yesterday morning I got up had a cup of coffee, looked outside, and decided to take the boat down the river.

I had the boat dropped in the water and was heading out Raymond's Gut before 7:30 AM.

Morning on the White Oak River is my absolute favorite time of the day, and yesterday morning was a particularly spectacular day to be on the river.

As you can see from the picture there was no traffic and the water was close to glassy calm.

The picture was taken from this spot just up the river from Swansboro.

Other than a couple of diving ducks, and lots of fish on my fish finder, I did not see any signs of life.

But I know most of the White Oak's life is below the surface, and it is hard to see even those shrimp that I have enjoyed.

I spent just enough time out on the river to clear my head and get ready for the day.
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Finally the winds dropped, the temperature went up, and we got to get on the water this morning.  I am not much for boating on Memorial Day weekend since the boat traffic is high, and the number of crazy boaters is even higher.  However, I figured that I could sneak in a trip this morning before the jet ski folks got out of bed.
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The last five days here on the coast have been a welcome way to erase the memories of the colder than normal weather which we endured for a couple of weeks.  I have complained enough about the cold weather, but I have to state that we only had a couple of days when we struggled to get out of the upper thirties so most people would laugh at our cold.

This spell of warm weather could not have come at a better time.  Most of us were wondering what had happened to the great weather of the last two winters.
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