Tangier Island, at last!

So I haven't changed my basic view that this place is doomed, but it's pretty magical. But that's starting in the middle of the trip, so I'll try again.

My friend Elizabeth came down on Monday night, so we could get an early start on Tuesday. We had been watching eBird, because there had been a roseate spoonbill in Albemarle County, just west of Charlottesville. When it was still there on Monday, we decided to hit the road early on Tuesday and go via Charlottesville to try to see the giant pink bird. Here's what they look like:

But that's a picture I took in Texas. When we got to the location, yes, the pink bird was there, on the lake where he had been for several days, but he was all the way across the lake sitting on a dock. The lake is surrounded by houses, so we couldn't get any closer. I didn't even take a picture, but if I had, it would have been of a pink lump in the distance. But, we did see it, so that was good. (Our sighting was also the last one on eBird, so it apparently moved on the same day that we saw it.)

Oh, and we did a good deed before we even got to the pink bird. We were driving up the road and found a bunch of cars stopped, and saw a lady sitting on the side of the road. Being the busybodies that we are, we pulled off the road to help. The poor woman was screaming for help, and when we stopped, she screamed to call 911, she'd broken her arm. She had been getting mail from her mailbox, tripped, and, yessiree, she had broken her arm. (The forearm is not supposed to sag between the wrist and the elbow, so it didn't take a medic (me) and a nurse (Elizabeth) to diagnose the problem.) Anyway, we called 911 and stayed with her till the ambulance got there. Another woman stopped and directed traffic, and some people asked if we needed help, but others honked and drove by at reckless speeds. People can be such assholes.

After the pink bird, we headed on to the Eastern Shore. Since we'd gotten such an early start (before 7 AM), even after our delays we still made it to the Bay Bridge Tunnel by just after noon. A truck had driven off the bridge a week or so ago, and they were repairing the guardrail on the bridge as we crossed. When we got across, we stopped at the Eastern Shore of Virginia NWR, one of my favorite places. We saw a couple of good birds there, but the highlight was a tree in the visitor's center parking lot that was attracting all kinds of butterflies and other flying things. It looked like there was a hole that was leaking sap (or that's my best guess) and everyone was coming to dine! There were hornets, 5 kinds of butterflies (probably more), a cool moth I'd never seen (a Nessus sphinx, which is a hummingbird mimic), and more. So I took lots of pictures there.

After lunch at the Cape Center, we moved on to Savage Neck Dunes State Natural Area Preserve, a nice preserve on the Bay side of the peninsula. The highlight of 2.5 km hike, which went through lovely woods to the beach, were summer tanagers! There were a lot of old trees too—I saw the largest tulip tree I have ever seen. There were adorable tiny frogs hopping all over the trail that we had to dodge, and brilliant emerald green beetles.

So those were the high points of Savage Neck—the low point was at the end when we were looking at wildflowers and berries near the parking lot: ticks! Do you know how much I hate ticks? There is no way to quantify my dread and hatred of ticks. One of the worst parts was that a lot of them were really tiny, like maybe 2 mm across, i.e., hard to see and too small to feel them crawling. I stripped off my pants in the parking lot, dancing around, shouting to Elizabeth to get them off me! Yep, I've got all the dignity. We drove to the hotel after that adventure, as I needed to strip everything off to be sure there were no more ticks! I showered, but still felt creeped out for most of the night. We bought a lint roller, and I got my pants out of the bag I'd tied them up in and used the roller on them (Elizabeth's idea!). I got 3 more ticks off the pants, two of which were the tiny little rotters! Ugh!! The pants are back in the bag and will get washed in hot water when I get home.

We ate dinner at the Island House in Watchapreague. Big storms had moved through while I was showering, and we were treated to a gorgeous rainbow over the marsh as we ate dinner.

The rainbow actually made a full arc. The other side of it was even more vivid.

Today (Wednesday) we stopped in Onancock for coffee and truly amazing doughnuts on the way to catch the 10 AM boat to Tangier. We had reservations for the trip, and expected that there might be a few more people heading over. The boat was full of people! They turned away a few people who didn't have reservations even. But we were the only two with baggage—everyone else was heading over for the day, planning to take the 3:30 boat back the same day. It was about an hour trip over, and the water was fairly calm. At the docks, a woman from our hotel was waiting for us with a golf cart. Everyone on Tangier tools around on golf carts! Well, there are a fair number of quads also, and some motorbikes, but mostly golf carts. As she drove us across the island to Brigadune, she acted as a tour guide, pointing out the restaurants, etc. After we got to our room, she asked if we'd reserved bikes or a golf cart. I said no, but if there was a golf cart available...

There was! I'll add a picture later, of me and the golf cart. We have been tooling all over the island, exploring and birding. I'm super glad we got the golf cart, as it's given us a lot of freedom. The island is only about a mile long, but it was hot today, and we wouldn't have been able to explore nearly as well on foot. It was $40 for the day to rent the golf cart, and worth every penny!

Which reminds me—I wanted to say something about the Brigadune. It's a nice place and I can see coming back again. But I just realized that I rented the golf cart with no paperwork at all. Which reminded me that we haven't paid anything yet—they told us we could pay today or tomorrow, it didn't matter. But they don't even take a deposit or a credit card number when you book the room. Their website just said something like that there was enough stress in the world, they didn't need payment ahead. There are just not many places this laid back about payment. They are also super good with information, both while we are here and before we came. They sent a long email about what to expect, and made sure that they knew which boat we were coming over on, so they'd be there to meet us. It's just a really nice place!

We did a lot of birding and had several good meals, but I'll write more about it tomorrow. We will go to the beach and do some more birdwatching tomorrow, then take the 3:30 boat back to Onancock. Tomorrow night we're staying at Chincoteague.