Okay, enough of the phone pic posts for a while. I promised photos from our exciting island expotition yesterday, so here they are. And it was exciting, at least for the folks who supervised from the beach and were ready to call the Coast Guard. I guess it was pretty exciting for us too. Thank you VERY MUCH Jan and Pete for standing at the ready with your motorboat in case we needed it!

Radical Betty expressed a desire to explore the island this weekend and after getting rained or winded out multiple times, the severe storms of yesterday morning cleared and the wind calmed and off we went. The major mission involved taking a look at the remains of the old stone lighthouse that used to be out there and it was a rousing success after braving a climb up a steep and slippery slope and a trek through guano-covered raspberry bushes.

I have kayaked around the island a bunch of times in the last few years but I haven’t really walked on the island since about the dark ages. Back then, there was actually a path from the landing to the lighthouse and at least one of the walls of the structure still stood. The structure was visible from the Doelle end of the beach until one day when Radical Betty was walking down there and realized it was gone. Fallen down.

Seagulls have always roosted (is that the right word?) on the island but back in the early 80s or so, cormorants started taking it over. Their guano destroyed a lot of the trees, as you will see if you click through the slideshow.

While we were out there, the wind came up and it was a fast ride in to shore and a bit of a squirrely ride for me in my little Walden Vista. It’s a great little boat but it is not really made for whitecapped waves on Gitchee Gumee. Even the little whitecaps we had yesterday. It was okay but a rudder would’ve been handy. But we made it and then swam, to wash off the guano. Oh, and I got in trouble because I did not have my [$600!] phone out there with me so that I could be contacted with the news that the wind had come up. Which I already knew. Go figger. Anyway, The Commander is supposedly making a breakfast, so I think I will end this clunky little description of our island trip. Maybe I’ll tweak it later. Or maybe not. Anyway, you can click here or on the pic for more photooooooos.

Updated to add that, in addition to Mouse’s frog stow away passenger, she had a real live toad in her kayak. We considered liberating him when we got *to* the island but decided he’d be happier at the beach, so we took him *back* too.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 8:30 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.