Vacation from an Adventure

April 3, 2016 

I’ve been busy recording birds on the migration.  Have not had a moment to write about anything else.  So to catch up with Our Life In The Lark:

I call last week a vacation from an adventure, not a vacation from a vacation.  We don’t consider our four month adventure a vacation at all.  It’s a learning opportunity, it’s an escape from northern winter and it’s birding.  That entails a lot of work.  Pleasant, but still work.  We do all of the things that need being done when you are home. Cooking, cleaning, bill paying, entertaining and shopping.  We have been doing it at Island Time.  Add Southern Time to that and it is any wonder anything gets done. 

We have a lovely bakery on the Island.  If there are five people in line ahead of you…well, just plan a lengthly wait for your bread or the best Pecan cinnamon roll ever.  Ed feels Island time is perfect.  Eze is OK with it….I’m doing better than last year.

Back to vacation last week.  Jason and Michaela and the girls, Rylan and Savana, joined us on the Island for a week.  Their spring break in Davis, Ca. worked with Spring Break here on the Island.  We planned this last year as a rendezvous.  Pap-Pap and WaWa split for a beach house (a bucket list item for me) and the kids bought tickets to fly.  

What a wonderful time we had.  A great big 2 story beach house with a back yard, our own private docks and view over the Mississippi Sound.  The front of the house faced the Gulf Beach.  

We did stuff.  Kids kayaked the marsh from the house.  We dined and drank with style (never hurts to have an exec chef in the family),  we “beached” “shelled” “crabbed” and  hiked the Audubon.  Jason got us all a LIFER, a Clapper Rail in the scope.  He is heading down the birder path. 

We ate ice cream before supper and stayed up late.  Eze tolerated the girls and was won over by Rylan by the end of the week.  The girls camped one night  with Pap-Pap in the Lark in the driveway.  I preferred the use of soaking tub and master suite.  I suppose in the biggest of buss RV’s  there are bath tubs, not so the Lark.

As all of our time with the “kids”, time goes by too quickly.  The week flew by.  They went on to several days in New Orleans.  Had a great time, as Facebook tracked their adventures for us.

They are back home and we are enjoying our last week at camp Dauphin Island.

We found Dauphin Island on the web for last years Lark adventure.  We spent thirty days winter 2014-15 and returned to spend 60 days this winter.  60 days is too long for us in one spot is the verdict.  Saying later into April was the birding thrill this year.  The migration started the last of March and is going full steam.  We have over 125 specious on the Island this year and 7 LIFERS.  Our life list is close to 350…will hope to get there by the end of this week.

Our next adventure takes us NW to Natchez, Miss. and then North to Nashville Tenn. via the Natchez Trace.  A parkway of history, 50 MPH speed and no stop signs.  Said to be as beautiful in the spring as the Skyline Parkway in Va.  We shall see. The adventure continues.