We are now back in West Lafayette after a trip to Delaware. Good birding, some hiking and kayaking, a little photography and some great eating. This trip was mostly play time. Usually I program in maintenance time on the trailer. Not this trip. It was pretty much just go go go.
While in Delaware a friend from Bloomington visited for a couple days. Always interesting to see a place you’re familiar with through new eyes. When she left we dropped her off at Baltimore-Washington International Airport on our way back to Indiana. Which means I hauled a ten-foot trailer loaded with kayaks and bicycles through the BWI departure area. Not recommended. Almost as much fun as driving it through the Philadelphia city center.
Coastal Delaware is becoming highly developed. My family has had an association with the Lewes-Rehoboth area for about 50 years and the area has changed significantly in that time. At one time Lewes dried up in the winter. Think tumbleweeds blowing down the street. Now Lewes has a high end tequila bar the town is open all year. While Lewes and Rehoboth themselves aren’t growing, the immediate surrounding area has become a poster child for poor planning. I hate the over-development, but there is still the Delaware Bay, the Atlantic Ocean and miles and miles of coastline, coastal estuaries, and salt marshes. Protected by National Wildlife Refuges, State parks, and other protected areas that keep bringing us back.
Salt marshes off Oyster Rocks Road, near Lewes, DE
We planned this trip to coincide with the Atlantic Seaboard northbound shorebird migration. Shorebirds migrate up from places south of the equator to arctic nesting areas. Delaware Bay is a key staging area for the migration. The shorebirds time their migration to coincide with the horseshoe crabs coming ashore to lay their eggs. The peak is around the full moon in May. This perfect timing has been happening for many millennia. Shorebird numbers have been declining the past couple decades but on the order of a million shorebirds will lay over in the Delaware Bay during the migration. All hoping to get enough energy from horseshoe crab eggs to make it to the arctic and reproduce. One can only imagine the numbers before human impacts caused their numbers to drop.
Short-billed dowitcher at Mispillion River Inlet and Oyster Rocks Road.
Ruddy turnstones at Mispillion River Inlet.
Piping plover (Federally Endangered), at Cape Henlopen State Park.
A wind-blown marsh wren, at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge.
A non-bird red fox at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge.
We did some hiking and kayaking too. We kayaked two places we were familiar with, Fleetwood Pond in Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge and the Trapp Pond State Park Cypress Swamp Trail. Both places are within an easy drive for a couple million people, but we had them to ourselves.
Outrunning a thunderstorm at Fleetwood Pond.
A very friendly black racer (we believe) at Fleetwood Pond.
Kayaking the cypress swamp at Trapp Pond State Park. I believe this is the northernmost cypress swamp in North America.
The skeletal remains of a racoon found on a trail in Cape Henlopen State Park. We don’t know what ate it, we just know we don’t want to meet it on the trail.
And we did some great eating. With today’s interstates and refrigerated trucks I’m sure one can get crabs, clams, and oysters reasonably fresh and safe to eat in the Midwest. But I just can’t bring myself to accept that. If you want good shellfish you need to be close to the source. Indiana is not. Even with climate change and ocean rise, Indiana isn’t going to be coastal for a long, long time. Indiana can give you great breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches.They win that one. But sorry, no, I’m not buying oysters and clams in Indiana.
Fried oysters at The Surfing Crab restaurant. Along with hush puppies and cheesy grits. Kind of a corn squared thing. The restaurant is a small cinder-block building with plain painted walls where you will find the best crabs and fried oysters in Delaware. About five minutes from our trailer.
Slo & Lo BBQ. A weekend only pop-up barbecue place in Lewes. A couple of old retired guys with nothing to do on their weekends except make some of the best barbecue you will eat. About five minutes from our trailer.
It always takes a couple days after a trip to get things back to a semblance of normal. Laundry, back mail, restocking the refrigerator, processing photos, writing blogs. We came home to a yard that looked something like an alfalfa crop.
Time to harvest the crops.
And, it looks like the groundhog war has heated up. A few weeks ago Fat Boy, the resident groundhog, emerged from hibernation under my shop. He has been hanging around for a couple weeks, finding something to eat in the yard or woods behind us. Thus far being pretty benign. During the winter I closed off all the entrances going under my shop except his main one. He seemed fine with that. We went a couple weeks with no new construction going on. I thought maybe we had come to some kind of agreement. He can live peacefully under the shop as long as the tomatoes go unmolested and no new tunnels appear. I should have known better. We were greeted with three young groundhogs running around. And, either Fat Boy and his progeny, or their rabbit allies, have opened up the tunnels I closed off. This of course means war.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 