Afterthoughts and Lessons Learned
1.  Use the bimini.  Sailing performance when cruising is less important than being comfortable (dry).
2.  The poor mans canvas dodger I made worked well both when it was raining and to keep sun out of the cabin. 
3.  Set the Fortress anchors by hand dragging with short scope until they bite in. 
4.  At night, if there is a chance the wind might shift or be strong, set the Garmin anchor alarm and turn the light off so it won't use much power.
5.  Fix lunch in the morning before leaving the anchorage.  If it's windy, you will have something to eat.
6.  When preparing for a trip, calculate the number of meals needed and only over provision by a little.
7.  It isn't that hard to buy milk, eggs, salad, bread, etc. along the way.  Don't over provision to start off.
8.  Silk Milk in the cardboard box was pretty good - especially on cereal and for cooking.
9.  Start cooking when preheating the stove burners.  Saves on fuel.
10. The Boat US app to send friends and family location emails worked great.
11. It seemed as though I was always looking for some excuse to push on, go faster, or relax less.  When I did take a break, I enjoyed it.  This is is a "lesson" that applies to many aspects of my life - to slow down and enjoy the "now".
12. My smaller (110) headsail does not perform as well to weather as my larger 140 genoa.  The best I seemed to be able to do with it was about 50 degrees off the wind.  I'm not sure if that is because the sail is out of shape or because the boat just doesn't go to wind as well in lighter winds.  It was nice having the smaller sail though.
13.  I used about 300 lbs. of ice.  I used about 25 gallons of diesel fuel and ran the engine about 100 hours.  These were my two biggest expenses.  I anchored out a majority of the nights.  I docked at free docks about 6 nights and stayed at marinas just two.  Overall, the trip was pretty inexpensive. 
14. Beware of jelly fish in bays and rivers south of Elizabeth City - I spotted several when at anchor.
15. "Brown Brown - Run Aground" - tip from bar tender in Beaufort's Backstreet Pub.
16.  Get a recent copy of Chapmans and carry on boat.
17. Having Active Captain on my phone was very helpful. The software to show the charts doesn't work well but being able to view markers offline was extremely valuable.  In the future, can use Polarview on the laptop.
18. Deaton's in Oriental was fantastic.  Buddy in the office, Tanya in parts, Gary the mechanic, and Eric the service mgr. were all great. They are outside of "downtown" but only a short ride and their rates are much better than in town. 
19. Consider downloading GRIBUS and Passage Weather for weather reports.
20. At 4.5 knots, the boat goes one statute mile in 12 minutes.  Measured on the Dismal Swamp using the mile markers.
21. Oriental has a great (free) town dock. It is very protected, good depth, very convenient to stores, coffee shop right across the street with wifi and can handle two 40'+ boats. It has a 48 hour stay time limit but is not strictly enforced.
22. As good as my Garmin 441 chartplotter is (and I consider it VERY accurate), there are times when you are in the middle of a cut/canal and the chartplotter shows you on land - outside of the channel.  I had the most current charts too. Don't rely on it in the cuts.
23.  I was surprised at how little time I had to "relax".  Several times, I wondered if I wasn't pushing too hard.  Or if it was just my personality that wouldn't allow me to relax.  I think the answer is more straight forward. Solo sailing is just a lot of work.  It's a lot to do, every single day.
24.  The Dismal Swamp Visitor Center has dockage for 4 or 5 boats - depending on their size. When it is  crowded, everyone just rafts up - sometimes 2 or 3 deep.  It makes for somewhat of a party and is interesting to meet others from far away places.
25.  On long tacks in open water, dim the Garmin to save on the battery.  It's much quicker than turing it off and on.
26.  After a few days, I developed a helpful checklist for each evening.
27.  Logs were informal.  Each evening, I'd record the day's activities that I later turned into this blog.  I also kept lists of fuel purchases, new friends, things to do once I got home, lessons learned, and other notes. A formal log would have been nice but I didn't have the time.