I have to tell you, I’ve been pretty frustrated with our internet service these past few days. So this morning, when I tried again, Blaine said, “OK. But don’t get frustrated.” Which produced a heavy sigh from me and a grudging “OK.” And lo and behold! It worked! Maybe it’s because of heavy fog and cloud cover this morning? It rained really hard for several hours in the wee hours. Now, back to things you may be more interested in – or not. : )
So, we got up and the weather looked pretty good, but I admitted to Blaine that I was a little nervous. Now, the thing is, I rarely get nervous, but for some reason I was a bit concerned about us being out in the ocean. I kept thinking “What if the tide keeps us from getting back to shore?” He reassured me that we’d be fine. And I trust him – more than anyone else I know. I just prayed that if my feelings had validation that God would stop him somehow.
This is why you can’t always trust your feelings. 😊
That’s a lighthouse on the left. And our main objective.
We had a spectacular time! The water, as you can see, was almost glassy smooth. The fog was lifting. It was absolutely quiet, except for us. It’s so hard for us to comprehend that there are no boats and very few birds around! The gulls don’t even make noise! We had the entire ocean to ourselves for as far as we could see.
Heading out
Blaine’s goal was to get to the Carter Island lighthouse. Easy-peasy!
Then we paddled around the islands. The water was so clear, we actually saw lobster! They weren’t real big, but how cool is that??? They liked to hide from us under the seaweed, so although we tried, we couldn’t get a picture. BTW – do you know how old a lobster has to be to get to market size? 7 years! We also found out that traps are made with holes to let out the small ones, but not the big ones.
Anyway, then we went around this island and heard a familiar sound. It wasn’t long before we saw them – osprey! These pictures actually turned out a little bit better than the ones we took before. They weren’t very hospitable to visitors though and kept chirping at us.
Our next adventure was to get on that island. We found a perfect docking spot on the other side. Someone had even built steps to get up and cleared narrow paths to get around.
We found their campfire site and made ourselves at home for a snack. 😊
Blaine’s swatting at mosquitoes, which were abundant and large.
But suddenly, they all disappeared! And yes, he wears gloves when he paddles. I don’t know why he didn’t take them off yet. : )
We tried to get closer to the birds, but gave up when the trail pretty much ended. It became much more overgrown than it looked when we started out.
We continued along our merry way, taking in the sights around a couple more islands before heading back.
It’s hard to see, but the Jeep’s over there.
The wind picked up and the water was more choppy, but not much.
Back to the Jeep (after 2 hours on the water) and home in time for lunch! We had eaten the last of our cookies (you know, the ones I messed up?) , so I baked this afternoon. Fortunately, this batch turned out better than the last one!
FYI – after many years, I finally found the secret to making chocolate chip cookies that don’t turn out flat and crunchy. I add more chips! There’s nothing better than the Nestle’s Toll House recipe, but I actually stopped making them years ago because they just didn’t turn out right. Now, I add LOTS of chips! At least twice as much as the recipe calls for! And I use a variety of chips. Our favorite are chunks, semi, dark, white and butterscotch all mixed together for “Grandma’s Mega Chocolate Chip Cookies”. YUMMMMMM!!
Unfortunately, at this time all I had were chunks and semi that were already stored in the freezer. I’m not buying more chips in Canada at $6/12 oz. bag!
After dinner we took a walk around the campground and stopped to take our new Header picture for the blog. Just as Blaine raised his phone, a guy hollered out, “You takin’ a picture too? Isn’t it incredible?!? That’s a million dollar coach!” He comes over with camera in hand. I smiled. Blaine said, “It’s ours, and we didn’t pay anywhere near that.” The guy went crazy so we invited him in. He went crazy some more and kept snapping pictures. It was really quite comical, but felt good to have someone appreciate it. He said he’d owned the campground for 16 years and they’d never had anything like it. I gave him a cookie.
We didn’t know he was the owner. 😊