Out on the Boat

So here we are out on the boat. We've crossed the Nansemond and are at a place called Candy Island. We walked along the beach on Candy Island looking at the fiddler crabs. Greg is a self-taught--and still learning--marine biologist. He likes to classify the animals he finds. He's been picking them up and I've been taking pictures of them. We found a lot of marsh fiddlers and a few red jointed fiddlers. We also found what looked like a dungeness crab. I took pictures so we'll classify it later.

Anyway, I'm going to stop on this entry, it's too difficult to write on my PDA with the boat bouncing around.

It's 1626 now and we have finally stopped at Bennetts Creek seafood restaurant for a break--THANK GOD! I'm roasted and I'm parched and I just want to relax and cool off. I'm having a Yuengling black & tan as a way to start cooling down. We ordered a pound of steamed shrimp and a dozen little neck clams. Looking forward to eating them, too. Let's see if I can chronicle some of the things that we did while we were out on the bay--not necessarily the bay proper, though we were still around the Nansemond and James rivers.

It's now later at night and I'm sitting her typing some more about today. I managed to get pretty toasted today. My legs are red, my neck is red and I feel it in both places--more so in my neck than my legs. The shower after I got home didn't help much with the pain. I'm coping, though.

Justin has come over tonight and is staying with us. We picked him up on our way home from Bennetts Creek. He played on the computer for a while, and now he is sound asleep in the papa san. Sue came over tonight and she is going to go fishing with us in the morning. As much as I want to go back out in the bay again, I'm not really looking forward to it as bad as my neck and legs feel. Perhaps I'll wear long pants tomorrow instead of shorts, and will ensure that I lather up with sunscreen early and often.

I took 160 pictures today, mostly of animals and things I saw that caught my interest. I took pictures of a blue heron and several white egrets.
The egret picture definitely turned out much better...I really like the way the light is reflecting off of the egrets back. The heron picture is blurry, I took it from further away and the zoom didn't work as effectively as I would have liked. But, the animals were beautiful.

Walking along the beach at Candy Island I took several more pictures. One of the most impressive ones, which may not mean much to anyone else, is a picture of the erosion caused by the fiddler crabs on the beach. The fiddlers will eat the roots of the cord grass, which erodes the shoreline. However, they prevent the cord grass from overgrowing the wetlands. I don't have too much trouble with them eroding the beach, they are a natural erosion method for the beach, not human interference.
There's a lot I want to say, but I'm too tired to type right now. I'm going to stop for now, more to follow tomorrow (hopefully less sun, though).