It was great to travel up into the mountains of North Carolina to Lake Lure this past week.  We rented a wonderful cabin through Airbnb and invited some college friends up to join us.  Our cabin was perfect and we particularly enjoyed sitting down by a creek behind our house that fed into Lake Lure.  It was relaxing just to listen to the water falling over the rocks and catch up with old friends!

Lake Lure is a beautiful resort and I highly recommend it for a quiet vacation get-a-way!

If you're a movie buff, you might know that parts of the Patrick Swayze movie "Dirty Dancing" was filmed at Lake Lure.

It's a beautiful day in Wilmington, NC and this morning after grabbing a coffee from Port City Java I headed out to Riverlights which is a new community being developed off the Cape Fear River.  Fortunately, it's only about 3 miles from my home and I love going out to listen to the birds and the water lapping up against the docks.  There's just something very soothing and relaxing about the views and the sounds. I'm' probably going to go back out there around 5:30 pm this afternoon when the tide is low to be able to capture the seagulls and water birds making their music.  They were pretty quiet this morning but yesterday around 5:30 pm they were singing away but I didn't have my gear. 

I love that typically there aren't many people around so you can truly enjoy the quietness.  I know that will change as summer draws near and the tourists arrive!  Until then....I will enjoy this beautiful spot on God's creation!

Take a listen below:

In addition to a love for recording I enjoy photography.  I love taking my camera along with me when I travel out to record various sounds.  Unsplash is a great place to share photos and all photos are free to be downloaded and used.  I'm happy to be a part of this community.  Take a look at some of my photos.

This morning around 5:00 am I headed out to Brunswick County NC for the woods.  My friend Dr. Jim Parnell, who is an Ornithologist and avid photographer & professor emeritus, University of North Carolina - Wlimington, took me out to record some wild turkey sounds.  We set up in the woods for a good 2 hours in a small photo cabin he had built waiting for the Turkeys to gobble a bit.  He was out yesterday morning and took the photo of the Turkey to your left and most likely it's the one that showed up for the show this morning.  He was very active and gobbled a lot but unfortunately was just too far away for me to get some workable sounds.  Oh well, maybe next time!  It was nice to get into the woods and enjoy the smells and sights and I really enjoyed being with Dr. Parnell.  As we were leaving he took me to a spot by the woods where there was a large piece of tin laying.  He lifted it up and there were two beautiful copperhead snakes laying there.  Fortunately, they didn't move but I was ready to bolt if they had moved just a little!