Finally!!!
I now post the third and final part of the account of our trip! If you feel that you can't read it all, at least scroll down to the last 5 or so short paragraphs.
Okay, it's about time that I actually give you an account of what happened on our last two days, Saturday and Sunday. Let me include the starting sentences at my last lazy attempt at a post:
We woke up kind of early (7:00), ate breakfast, and went to Food Lion to get some lunch materials for, er..., lunch. Next, we went to the kayaking place and left with the kayaks and the guide and his assistant for the point where we would set off.
It was a few minutes' drive there, but we finally arrived in a place that looked like somewhat like a treeless swamp but was in fact a seawater estuary. We took the kayaks off of the rack, and the guide showed/told us how to use them and adjusted our rudder pedals. All the while we had to endure the festering stench of a deceased animal that happened to reside right near our kayaks. So, after that was done, we dragged our kayaks to the muddy banks at the edge of the water.
We got in. There were hundreds of 2-inch by 2-inch fiddler crabs on the opposite bank. They were interesting. (That's a little foreshadowing there, hint hint.) So, the estuary was like a bunch of intersecting rivers and so forth. We would've been pretty lost without our guide. After some minutes of kayaking, perhaps a quarter of the way through the estuary, I believe it was Bonnie who pointed and exclaimed, "Look! Is that a shark?" The guide, with some measure of what was perhaps excitement, answered, "No, it's a dolphin!" Our course took us closer to them , and we ended up getting perhaps 10 feet away from them. There were at least two of them; perhaps there were three. They swam along under the water and occasionally poked their heads out of the water as they traveled farther and farther away. We thought that was pretty cool. Our guide then pointed out a far-off power line pole and told us that that was the direction to head.
As we went along, the guide explained to us about the estuary, and so forth. After a while, we reached the Intercoastal Channel or something like that. This is a big "road" where a lot of boats travel, so we waited for one boat to pass before we crossed. By this time, the power pole was a lot closer. We rowed until we encountered a beach with a lot of people with boats on it; this was the other side of the part of the island that was our destination. So, we rowed a little more until we arrived at a beach with virtually nobody in it. There had been so few people there that there were still lots of nice, big shells everywhere (they hadn't been picked clean by people). About 10 yards from the island shore, there was a sandbar that we walked to (in between the bar and the shore, the water was about 4 feet deep with lots of sharp shells on the bottom) and Adam claimed it as his island. That didn't last long. It was about 11:30, so we decided to have some lunch. We took out lunch boxes that we had stowed in the kayak and walked underwater to the sand bar, where we had our food. Next, we kind of walked around on the sandbar and in the water. We noticed some cool stuff about the waves. There was some interesting diffraction and refraction around the bend of the sand bar. Also, there was a place where the waves would bounce back, so two waves collided head-on (they were only like small ripples, even though it looked really cool, like two massive armies running into each other to fight and one emerging smaller but victorious; this is almost certainly the longest parenthetical that I have ever written).
After a while, we were called back to shore, where the guide explained the existence of these barrier islands and how they keep re-forming, etc. He showed us some tide-pool like things where there were anemones, crabs, etc. Next, he took us on an inner tour of the island (he hadn't done it in years, so we weren't really walking along much of a path), which was crawling with spiders, ticks, ants, and mosquitos. It wasn't too fun, but we did learn some interesting stuff, including about a tree whose leaves smell like citrus and cause numbing when chewed. Once we got out of there, we cooled off in the ocean and loaded back up in the kayaks.
We then went back around the island and crossed the channel thing again. At this point, Meredith asked what the best time would be to flip the kayak. The guide said that now was a good time, so Meredith flipped (in the literal sense, for now). He then walked her through getting back in the canoe. Then, the rest of us did the same. It was fun.
As we approached our destination, the guide was talking about how rich in organic matter the mud was in the estuary. Adam and Meredith have had a long-standing rivalry on eating food (both in type and amount), so Meredith said she would probably win if she ate mud.
So she did.
It wasn't a trivial amount, either. What she ate (licked off her hand, really) was about the amount that you would get from taking a big lick of a McDonald's soft serve ice cream cone. This was just after we arrived on shore. At this point, we worked on getting the canoes back onto the racks on the trailer that brought them there. As we were walking back to the van, we saw a little fiddler crab, about the size of a half-dollar, scuttling across the road. Meredith said, in essence, "If you catch it, I'll eat it!"
So she did.
She just popped it into her mouth, crunched it a couple of times, and swallowed. She said it was a bit bitter, but otherwise good. The guide essentially said that she was the strangest person that he had ever guided.
So, that was the end of that strange experience, which was, needless to say, strange.
For the rest of the day, I think we just goofed around and played 80 and whatnot. It has been about two weeks, because I have put this off for so long, so I can't really remember.
The next day, we left. We left Michael there too. This was only because his parents came to spend some vacation time there.
THE END.
Okay, it's about time that I actually give you an account of what happened on our last two days, Saturday and Sunday. Let me include the starting sentences at my last lazy attempt at a post:
We woke up kind of early (7:00), ate breakfast, and went to Food Lion to get some lunch materials for, er..., lunch. Next, we went to the kayaking place and left with the kayaks and the guide and his assistant for the point where we would set off.
It was a few minutes' drive there, but we finally arrived in a place that looked like somewhat like a treeless swamp but was in fact a seawater estuary. We took the kayaks off of the rack, and the guide showed/told us how to use them and adjusted our rudder pedals. All the while we had to endure the festering stench of a deceased animal that happened to reside right near our kayaks. So, after that was done, we dragged our kayaks to the muddy banks at the edge of the water.
We got in. There were hundreds of 2-inch by 2-inch fiddler crabs on the opposite bank. They were interesting. (That's a little foreshadowing there, hint hint.) So, the estuary was like a bunch of intersecting rivers and so forth. We would've been pretty lost without our guide. After some minutes of kayaking, perhaps a quarter of the way through the estuary, I believe it was Bonnie who pointed and exclaimed, "Look! Is that a shark?" The guide, with some measure of what was perhaps excitement, answered, "No, it's a dolphin!" Our course took us closer to them , and we ended up getting perhaps 10 feet away from them. There were at least two of them; perhaps there were three. They swam along under the water and occasionally poked their heads out of the water as they traveled farther and farther away. We thought that was pretty cool. Our guide then pointed out a far-off power line pole and told us that that was the direction to head.
As we went along, the guide explained to us about the estuary, and so forth. After a while, we reached the Intercoastal Channel or something like that. This is a big "road" where a lot of boats travel, so we waited for one boat to pass before we crossed. By this time, the power pole was a lot closer. We rowed until we encountered a beach with a lot of people with boats on it; this was the other side of the part of the island that was our destination. So, we rowed a little more until we arrived at a beach with virtually nobody in it. There had been so few people there that there were still lots of nice, big shells everywhere (they hadn't been picked clean by people). About 10 yards from the island shore, there was a sandbar that we walked to (in between the bar and the shore, the water was about 4 feet deep with lots of sharp shells on the bottom) and Adam claimed it as his island. That didn't last long. It was about 11:30, so we decided to have some lunch. We took out lunch boxes that we had stowed in the kayak and walked underwater to the sand bar, where we had our food. Next, we kind of walked around on the sandbar and in the water. We noticed some cool stuff about the waves. There was some interesting diffraction and refraction around the bend of the sand bar. Also, there was a place where the waves would bounce back, so two waves collided head-on (they were only like small ripples, even though it looked really cool, like two massive armies running into each other to fight and one emerging smaller but victorious; this is almost certainly the longest parenthetical that I have ever written).
After a while, we were called back to shore, where the guide explained the existence of these barrier islands and how they keep re-forming, etc. He showed us some tide-pool like things where there were anemones, crabs, etc. Next, he took us on an inner tour of the island (he hadn't done it in years, so we weren't really walking along much of a path), which was crawling with spiders, ticks, ants, and mosquitos. It wasn't too fun, but we did learn some interesting stuff, including about a tree whose leaves smell like citrus and cause numbing when chewed. Once we got out of there, we cooled off in the ocean and loaded back up in the kayaks.
We then went back around the island and crossed the channel thing again. At this point, Meredith asked what the best time would be to flip the kayak. The guide said that now was a good time, so Meredith flipped (in the literal sense, for now). He then walked her through getting back in the canoe. Then, the rest of us did the same. It was fun.
As we approached our destination, the guide was talking about how rich in organic matter the mud was in the estuary. Adam and Meredith have had a long-standing rivalry on eating food (both in type and amount), so Meredith said she would probably win if she ate mud.
So she did.
It wasn't a trivial amount, either. What she ate (licked off her hand, really) was about the amount that you would get from taking a big lick of a McDonald's soft serve ice cream cone. This was just after we arrived on shore. At this point, we worked on getting the canoes back onto the racks on the trailer that brought them there. As we were walking back to the van, we saw a little fiddler crab, about the size of a half-dollar, scuttling across the road. Meredith said, in essence, "If you catch it, I'll eat it!"
So she did.
She just popped it into her mouth, crunched it a couple of times, and swallowed. She said it was a bit bitter, but otherwise good. The guide essentially said that she was the strangest person that he had ever guided.
So, that was the end of that strange experience, which was, needless to say, strange.
For the rest of the day, I think we just goofed around and played 80 and whatnot. It has been about two weeks, because I have put this off for so long, so I can't really remember.
The next day, we left. We left Michael there too. This was only because his parents came to spend some vacation time there.
THE END.
posted by Seth at 7/11/2003 07:45:00 PM
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