Mission Impossible: Find Hurricane Earl Survivors!

Please start to sing the theme song to the now so impossibly retro TV show, "Mission Impossible". Too young? You Tube it!!!

The Tuesday after the passing of Hurricane Earl off the Delmarva Coast, there I am on the Hawk Watch platform enjoying my day. Nothing to do but watch the ocean, bay, sky and a few raptors! After duty, descending the steps, my cell gets in a voice mail. Oddly the cell call never came in on the platform. Oh, well.

My "Piping Plover" Director of Endangered Species, Birds and Plants, implores a call back. I do.

Theme Song Please:

Your Mission if you choose to take it is to find the Survivors of Hurricane Earl! Find the Endangered Species Wild Beach Amaranth Plants that made it thru Hurricane Earl's High Tide!

Why yes, I will take on the mission!

In 25 mph winds with stinging sand I crawled the Dune Line between Key Box and Conquest beach. I was truly bummed as I started the crawl. There were 25 plants..... I was finding none.

And then I found one...... a tiny water-logged survivor.

And then I found one the size of a small butter plate!

And then I found one the size of an appetizer plate!

With each find, happier, and happier I became despite covered with the flying gritty and filmy sand.

20% survivor rate!

Ta Da!

Beach Sand & Mountain Snow

My six months of Delaware beach-side and ( legal) dune wandering does not translate well to scrambling Pennsylvania rocky trails.  Eight weeks after cottage-Winterizing, back "On The Mountain" and I am still trying to get my "trail legs".  

 Weekends I've favored flat trails.  My one adventure negotiating the rocky trail and summit of Waggoner's Gap Hawk Watch left me wondering why I left Delaware!

Fourteen years living at 1,200 feet and I am a flat lander, "sea-level" girl-at-heart still!

Perhaps because I first crawled beach-side as a "sand crab baby", I am hard wired for sand and water mobility and not rocks and boulders!

Delaware Fish & Wildlife Dune Surveys are the highlight of my Summer!  I get to legally wander the dunes in search of the endangered Beach Amaranth! Scorching sun or driving wind, I am still happy wandering the sand!  

In shoes or barefoot, on warm or cold sand, it is my medium. At Gordon's Pond and Delaware Seashore Park, walking along the low-tide shoals with the water just to my ankles, peering at the tide-pool life I am in my joy.  

This weekend's Snow Storm walk, I was almost comfortable again!  I pulled on thermal muck boots and walked and walked.  Slushing thru the 10-12 inches of snow I was almost on "sand".  Finding my balance, sinking-in, and leaving footprints............ snow is not sand..... but similar!

Mountain Snow and Beach Sand Blessings,

1 Day, 3 Beaches!

Summers as a child my day was made if got to visit "a new beach".  As an adult I am driven still to find, "a new beach"!  Lord knows how I love the Island of Kauai for spending a day wandering from one beach cove to the next!

Sunday I did my childhood dream of three beaches in one day!

I started off the day with a glorious hour's swim at DE's Seashore Park, Tower Road.  Then I tried out the West Street Beach for a quick dip and to check out the beach break, which is much improved since 2008.

Then as the sun started to dip, I raced off to Cape Henlopen's State Park at The Point for "Bird Police Duty" and to take in the feeding birds at low-tide and the  sunset.

1 Day, 3 Beaches: makes me happy!