20 days, 10 nests, No Rest.

We have 10 nests incubating, spread over 11 miles, across 4 beaches.  We are driving about 40 miles everyday, at an average speed of about 10 miles per hour.  We've been working for 20 days now, have not had a day off, and do not expect one anytime soon.  When we do get a day off, it will be for one of us, while the other does all the work alone.  We are tired sore, bug bitten and sun burned - and we're having an amazing time.

Today we did the regular routine.  We found two nests today on the north end of South Middle.  They are SM2 and SM3.  One of which (SM2) needed to be relocated.  Kate did most of the work today while I snapped pictures, did the data entry, and cheered her on.  She says she wants to be more comfortable working the nests before she'll be ready to go it alone and give me a day off.  Hopefully that will happen soon, though on my "day off", I'm certain I'll find a bunch of things to keep me busy.  At least, when that day finally comes, I'll get to sleep in past dawn.

Besides the normal routine, we managed to squeeze in a few adventures.  First, since Kate was so quick on the bicycle today, she spent some time cast netting at the north end tidal creek.  She caught a dozen or so minnows.  Later, at the south end tidal creek she tried to catch some larger fish with the net, but had no luck.  While she was working on that, I went clamming in the surrounding mud.  I found 7 clams, but they were mostly large chowder clams.  I was hoping for little or top necks, but these will get eaten in some form.

On our way back home, we wanted to stop at our crab pot and refresh it with the bait Kate caught.  We decided to take a new road as a shortcut to the pot.  It went as shortcuts usually do.  After a rough ride, navigating through overgrown areas and around fallen trees we were almost to the pot.  Then we came upon a small sign and a missing bridge.  We had to turn around and go all the way back.  It sure would have been nice to place that sign at the beginning of the road.  Still there was some notable vistas along the way.  We spotted several egrets roosting, a large alligator, and some new flowers we haven't seen before.  We plan to go back and pick some, but other than for that, we probably won't use that road again.

We finally did get back to our crab pot.  There are 4 large blue crabs in there now.  With the fresh bait we added, more should follow soon.  We want to make crab cakes, but that will take a lot of crabs.  When we got home, we were dirty and tired, so we showered and lazed around on the couch through the afternoon.  I uploaded some more photos to our ever growing web album.  We also called AT&T to suspend my phone.  That should save us some money for a few months.  If you'd like to get in touch with me, just call Kate, or our house phone.