Alive!

To all my readers (all 3 of you), I apologize that my recent correspondence has been lacking. Memorial Day weekend on the island was absolutely nuts and I was immediately tossed into the fray. While still not completely trained, I have already given 4 tours through salt marsh, three of which I did alone. Rather exciting. The tours, about 2 hours long each, travel all around the winding streams of the salt marsh. Commonly seen wildlife includes snowy egrets, great egrets, ibis, mullet and the occasional heron. Supposedly, however, there are sometimes dolphins and otter who patrol the creeks for prey. The dolphins, smart as they are, chase fish up onto the creek grass where they can be easily eaten. Apparently there can be alligators as well, but they are quite uncommon as they prefer the still, warmer waters of the golf course. Plus golfer's chihuahuas make a nice snack.
Anyways, while the tours are a lot of fun to run and are quite beautiful, they are really labor intensive as they take a lot of set up and clean up. All in all a standard trip takes 4 hours with 2 hours of actual paddling time. Apart from the paddling the most interesting part is probably the travel to and from the conservancy. Because the island charges ridiculous amounts to store boats at the creek access, we keep ours on a large trailer back at the dorm. Then every time there's a tour we attach the trailer to the biggest golf cart we have and start the harrowing adventure to the dock. For some reason, residents of the island can't comprehend that while golf carts themselves are easy to control, a 10 foot trailer on the back of them, is not. Bikers, pedestrians and other carts seem to think that we should act just like everyone else with the same amount of mobility. Not so much.