Tangier and Chincoteague, after the fact

Clearly, I didn't write more the next day... I'll start with the rest of our Tangier stay, and finish with Chincoteague.

First, the golf cart!

The "roads" on Tangier are quite narrow, some just large enough for the golf cart, but there actually were some cars and trucks on the island. We were surprised at how many. They were all on the smaller end—no full sized pickups, etc.—but still, quite a few. Some of the golf carts, like ours, were gas powered, but others were electric and quiet. As I said, it gave us great freedom to zip around the island. We were birding, so we circled the island crossing the bridges many times, and were rewarded with some lovely birds.

Here's a map of Tangier. I didn't put the scale bar on (bad me!) but from Lorraine's Seafood (more later) to Brigadune Inn is 0.8 miles. The dock where we arrived on the island is just north of Lorraine's. There are 4 bridges that span the water that bisects the island, and we took them all multiple times.

I mentioned that we visited because Tangier's time is limited. The residents (about 400 live there now) want a sea wall to help preserve the island. From what I understand, that would help with erosion, but not with the other two big problems: land subsidence and sea level rise. Even if they did get a sea wall (at a cost of many hundreds of millions of dollars that would have to come from government sources), that's only postponing the inevitable, as they estimate it might allow the island to survive for another hundred years at best. But the sea level would continue to rise during that time. As it is, there were crab holes hundreds of feet from the shore, which means the water table is already very high and that would not stop.

A recent Corps of Engineers study projected that, if trends continue as they have, West Ridge (marked on the map) will be a wetland by 2033, with Main Ridge (where the "downtown" is) following by 2035. The eastmost Canton Ridge is projected to become a wetland by 2055.

So, as much as I loved Tangier, its days are numbered. Residents told me that politics were preventing action, but I think it's simpler than that: is it worth many hundreds of millions of dollars to save (temporarily) an island that is home to 400 people? Honestly, I don't think that it is. This is an issue that is going to recur all along our coastlines in the next decades (google Rodanthe, NC, for example, where houses are falling into the ocean, or tidal flooding images from south Florida), and, I'm sorry, you cannot stop the ocean.

The nutshell message is visit Tangier now. It's definitely worth visiting! Elizabeth and I are planning to go back next spring and stay at least 2 nights at the Brigadune.

We now return to our regularly scheduled travel blog.

The food on the island was good, and the choices limited. We ate at all three restaurants—the island lost 3 others to the Covid slowdown—and liked two of the three. Lorraine's Seafood is the sit down place near the dock. It is super crowded at lunchtime, but perfect at dinner, when the day trippers have left the island. The food was good, but fairly expensive for what we got. The newest place is a small coffee shop, the Muddy Toes Cafe. We ate lunch there and had a yummy shrimp salad. The last place was Four Brothers, and we were not that impressed. You order at a window and then wait a long time. They serve a lot of ice cream and apparently can prepare one ice cream cone or milkshake every 4-5 minutes. Since we were behind a bunch of ice cream people, our food took about 30 minutes. (Okay, my opinion may have been colored by their Trump stickers and Trump flag flying...)

Here are some of the cooler birds we saw: seaside sparrow, yellow crowned night heron, tricolored heron, peregrine falcon, clapper rail, and an osprey looking back at me.

When we left, we drove the golf cart to the dock and left it there. The hotel people were so nice. We didn't leave the room until 2:30, and we had the golf cart for way over 24 hours, but they just told us not to worry about it and didn't charge us extra. They also gave us a first responder discount (though I told them they didn't need to!) and Rob gave us two Tangier Fire Department coffee mugs. (Note to self: send donation check to Tangier Fire Department.)

On the way back, the water was even calmer than it had been the day before. Day trippers seemed surprised that we had stayed the night. We asked the captain if he would slow down for an osprey nest that we had seen on the way over, and he obliged. As on the way out, the parents were feeding two young ones.

After we got back to Onancock, we drove up to Chincoteague. The tide was in when we arrived, and the water was a high as I had ever seen it there. It meant that birdwatching was suboptimal, but suboptimal on Chincoteague is still better than almost anywhere. We birded for a while, then checked into our motel. We had another seafood dinner at Captain Zach's Seafood, which was quite yummy.

On Friday, we started with a donut breakfast from Sandy Pony Donuts. I went with coffee and a Jingle Shells donut. Then we went birding for a while, luckily at low tide so the shore birds were more visible. There were also a lot of ponies out grazing in the refuge.

Then it was time to head out. We had meandered around so that we didn't leave Chincoteague until mid afternoon, which meant that we didn't get home until about 9:45 Friday night. It was a great trip though, and seemed like it was longer than a few days.

Now I'm looking ahead! This time next month I'll be in Iceland! Paula and I have changed our plans a bit. We're going to do a glacier hike on our second day there. Since the glacier is in the southern part of the island (not far from Vik), we definitely won't be in the Westfjords. After the hike, we'll decide if we want to stay in the south (iconic sights and—undoubtably—crowds) or drive the 400 km to the Westfjords. If we do that, we will have 2 full days to explore there, which would be okay. I'm excited about the trip...but, I get excited about every trip.

I'm also rethinking my Romania trip in December. I still want to take a short trip, but I'm looking at several other options: 8-day self-guided Portugal (Lisbon and Porto) or 11 days in Costa Rica. Hmm, or something else. I don't have to decide right away, so I may just watch the sales on Gate 1.

So, that's it for the moment. All is well here. Jake is doing well, and will have a follow up MRI next Monday. My mom is not so hot—she's been pretty stable on her current meds, but she fell twice today, the second time requiring 911 and stitches. I talked to her between falls and she sounded good (lucid and responsive), but they told me she'd been up all night last night, looking for my dad and grandmother. And she refused to nap today (stubborn as ever). They take good care of her, but obviously can't follow her around to catch her when she's sleep-deprived and won't settle down. Dementia sucks.

Till next time!