Sunday, the day after the wedding, started with brunch at Tony's and Donna's - that is, if you don't count the post-reception drinks I had with Gordon and Karen in Mount Pleasant before they dropped me off at my motel. Luckily, a Sunday afternoon drive up US17 to Wilmington requires neither a concerted effort, a lot of time, nor exceptional concentration. In fact, I was just beginning to feel human again when my arrival in Wilmington required me to bump up my attention to navigational chores.
I called Joe Vetter for directions and managed to find his house with no miscues. I guess I had talked to him a couple of times in the past year or so, but hadn't visited with him since January 2009 when he had a meeting in Austin. I took the pictures below while Joe was showing me around the St. Therese church property at Wrightsville Beach. The pics are certainly not going to make me or anyone else famous, but my excuse is that visiting with Joe pretty much requires your complete attention. He's such a great storyteller, you don't want to miss even a word. So the comments with these pictures will probably be no deeper than my concentration was when I was taking them.
The picture above and the first two below were taken from the third-floor balcony of Joe's office, next door to the church. His neighbors here seemed very friendly. The lady from the gray house next door came out on her balcony and discussed soup with Joe for a few minutes. He told me later she hosted overnight half the attendees from a retreat a few weeks before, that amounted to 28 high school or college girls. That's a bunch!
Watching the surf captured my attention for a few minutes. This view is directly out to sea from the office balcony. Given the rather dismal weather at the time and my concern for good photo opportunities over the next few days, it occurred to me this balcony would be a great place to set up a tripod and take photos of offshore storms at night - during the daytime too, admittedly, but especially at night. (Note: The landing at the top of the steps is where we were standing when I took the last three pictures of this post.)
The two covered decks on the right are directly behind the church. The swimming pool on the other side of the decks belongs to the neighbor on the right. The friendly neighbor on that side told Joe he was welcome to use the pool whenever he wished. It seems to me that Joe has fallen in with some good folks down in Wrightsville Beach, and that warms my heart. Yeah, he's lucky to be there, but they're more than lucky to have him.
These pictures are somewhat drab, with the overcast skies, but with changing weather conditions and, of course, lighting, I see great potential here for a photographer content to sit around waiting for the light to change.
A detail of sea oats waving storm clouds on into the beach. . .
At the extreme right of this picture there's a restaurant and fishing pier. We went down there and out on the pier for a half hour or so and I got some pictures of a few seagulls and people surf fishing, but nothing special. But like I said, the place shows great potential, and I was more interested in Joe's stories anyway.
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