Early this afternoon I decide I have business to take care of at the refuge visitor center. Primary mission: to pick up a couple of books on edible and medicinal plants and get a annual visitor pass. Decide, while I'm there I'm gonna' go poke around at the lighthouse a little bit. Ask if anybody wants to go. The wife has a cold, son is not interested, but the little one, Carol, 5, is all up for a trip to the lighthouse, so we take the car.
As we head down the road from Hwy 98 to the refuge, she's starting to doze off. First time I think I've been there when there was somebody at the gate house, but I don't get over that way as often as I would like. Bought the annual pass. We get to the visitor center and surprisingly she's not cranky when I wake her up to get out of the car. We go in and take a tour of the stuffed and replica critters. I find the books I'm looking for and as we check out I figure out I could have used my federal duck stamp for a annual pass. Oh well, I'll try to remember that for next year. After I found the books I wanted I asked Carol if whe wanted a book, but she didn't. Then the lady working the counter gave her a refuge children's activity book.
We get to the lighthouse to find cars and trucks parked all over the sides of the road.
<"Oh well, I'll find somewhere and park. No big deal.">
<"Hey, there's one empty parking spot right there.">
<"They must have known we were coming.">
<"Should have checked the tide before we left the house. We ain't gonna' do nothin' with this castnet with the water this low.">
<"Oh well, let's go for a walk and see what we can find anyway.">
We get our boots on in the parking lot. Me, my neoprene wading booties, and Carol, her pink rubber boots that she always gets in over the tops of, but they're easy to hose out. I get on my pack with water, snacks and castnet. Give her a mesh bag to carry all the mullet in (:lol:) and we set out walking east. Falderee, Falderaah, Falderee.
Forgot to bring the walking sticks.
Lots of fiddlercrabs, lots of wading birds of various sizes, lots of bluecrabs in the water, loads of finger mullet and baitfish. Saw very few big mullet.
Got to the end of the beach at the first cove. The mudflat in the cove was nearly all exposed. Don't know what all the wading birds were munching on, on that mudflat, but whatever it was, there must have been a bunch of it. Strongly suspect tube worms, since that's what I saw a lot of mounds of.
"Let's go out there, Dad."
"Baby, do you know how soft that mud is?"
"I want to go out there."
"Okay........We'll leave all our stuff right here."
I picked her up to cross the little tidal channel and put her down in the littoral zone. Thought about it could have been the literal zone........but I left the books in the car.
Anyway, she got stuck several times and went to her knees in the mud a few times and I wound up carrying her and pretty soon we both had, had enough of the mudflat.
We went back to the beach and sat in the shade of the palms while munching Saltines and watching the tide rise to see it any decent size mullet would come in with it. They never did.
Probably would have done okay if we had stayed until dark, but a little after 5 I decided that the wife had probably started supper and we should get on back.
On the way back I found a plastic picnic utensil washed up in the seaweed.
"A fork in the trail."
Carol, in complete deadpan, "That's funny."
<
><"Caught you by surprise.">
<"Yeah, well, you don't often hear deadpan from a five year old.">
Found a long post hung between the forks of two trees.
My speculation, "I wonder if somebody might have been camping here."
<"Seems like a good place to get caught. Camping on the refuge, just up the beach from the lighthouse.">
Me a little bit later, "Look at all the fiddlers."
Carol, "The fiddlers are camping on the beach, Dad."
Me, "
"So, we make it back to the house to find not only supper, but the wife has mowed the yard and cleaned the driveway and porch.
