Day 299: 07/09/2010 The beach and Captain Barry's cruise. And frogs.

What a fun day!  To the beach:

And then, the highlight of the whole trip, a cruise with Captain Barry!  OK, if any of you go to Chincoteague, and you have kids, DO this!  It's not a pony cruise, or a "go around the island and we'll tell you it's history" cruise.  It's a "let's get all muddy and flirt with danger" cruise.  And it's awesome!

Here's Captain Barry:

First he took us clamming:

A  little crab shell that was shed on the crab's way to becoming a soft-shell crab.  Yum.

Digging, digging...

YES!

Then to look at birds at a different part of the bay.

Here's a double crested cormorant, the shellfish police!

Egret comming in for a landing.  These bird photos were taken from far away and cropped in, so they're kind of grainy.

Then looking for shells.  They were all pretty bleached out, but the kids had fun digging through the pile.  I loved this old gum boot.

Captain Barry puts out crab traps, then has the kids haul one in, at which point he gives them plastic pinchers, dumps the crabs onto the deck, and tells the kids to put the crabs into a bin.  You should have seen the kids dance!  Then he does it AGAIN, and has the kids pick them up and dump them overboard.

Then we went looking for fiddler crabs.  I looked up, and there was Captain Barry with my camera!  Course, he didn't know I had it on  manual, so thanks to photo editing, the exposure was corrected.  Whew.

Here are a selection of his offerings, taken from the deck of his boat.

What sun, surf, sand, and wind does to a person's hair.  The look on my face says annoyance, which I wasn't, at all!  A picture doesn't necessarily speak the truth.  teehee.  I was having a great time, messing around with the fiddler crabs and the kids.  Those crabs are lightning fast, but so fun to play with.

The end.

Oh!  We went home after this and made clam chowder from our clams.  Then had a camp fire.  The kids were really tired, and Julia said "I need to go to sleep, but I want to have popcorn and s'mores, too."  So I said she could go lay in the tent, and I'd make the popcorn for her.  So she and Adam headed in there, and Julia started to tell stories to The Bean.  "What would you like the story to be about?  Mermaids?  Seahorses?  Captain Barry?"  Adam chose Captain Barry.  So Julia spun a story about painting Captain Barry's boat, and it was purple, and then the crew wanted to sing, but Captain Barry told them they couldn't sing, they had to work.  And on it went.  I made popcorn as slowly as possible so I could listen to them having such a lovely time together.

Then we had popcorn and went hunting for frogs.  Adam insists that he has "flashlight eyes."  It was great fun chasing tiny little frogs with a flashlight in the dark, catching them, and letting them go.  So very fun.  The little guys were EVERYwhere.  Watching the kids with their lantern racing around was magic.

It was an awesome day!