Sunday, June 3, 2012

Slackers

Well, between limited WiFi access and a hell of a lot of fun I have completely neglected my blog. We'll play a bit of catch-up with some help in the very near future. In the meantime, a quick update. All is well and we've been having a blast! We holed up in Tampa for a few weeks with a side trip to Naples then St Pete. Visited Hamish, his wife Sarah and met their baby Kai. The visit to St Pete was to see Elliot who got married on June 1st. Sorry we weren't able to make it to the wedding but the time we spent was great. We left Tampa a few days ago and drove to Cape Canaveral to visit Kennedy Space Center. Haven't been there since I was a child and it was still super cool to see huge rockets, launch pads and the building currently housing two space shuttles. The full-scale Saturn 5 was awe inspiring. Cannot imagine being strapped to that thing at launch. Hit St Augustine for two nights then off to Jekyll Island. after that on to Savannah. It is a super cool town and we walked for miles. The squares are so nice to visit in the summer. We stopped by a visitor's center (highly recommended anywhere you go) and found out that Grace Potter and the Nocturnals were throwing a free concert at Forsyth Park so we grabbed the beach chairs and hung out for a few hours. It was fantastic and we took the local scene in. Next stop was Hilton Head where our friend Scott offered his sisters condo to us. Lo and behold, it's a 3 bedroom condo on the island - on a golf course and a short bike ride to the beach. SCORE!!!! We ran all over the place here and checked things out. The beach is super nice and the difference between low and high tide is at least a pitching wedge. We had to move our camp three times as we were being inundated with the sea. This morning we got up at 5:30 to bike to the beach for the sunrise. The bike path is along the road but under some beautiful trees and we got there early enough to take some pre-sunrise pics and ride on the beach. Along the way we saw turtle tracks and investigated further. We found a fresh loggerhead nest and I stuck sticks in the sand to mark it and we were trying to figure out who to notify when a cart rolled up and two people got out to do some research. They found the nest with a probe, extracted an egg and marked the nest with tubes and tape. This was the 81st nest of the season on the island. We happened to visit the turtle sanctuary on Jekyll Island and we'll fill you in on those details in another post. Needless to say it was fascinating. Time to run for now - headed off to visit Harbor Town for the sunset!!!!