Portsmith Island-Part I

I know it's overdue, but you know.

We went over to Portsmith Island on Tuesday to do some shelling and visit the NPS restoration of the village. The hardest thing about it....was informing butch that we had to get up at 5AM on a vacation day so we could catch the 6AM ferry. We made it down to the ferry with time to spare, and butch was a little happier once he had actually gotten a cup of coffee from the ferryman. We chatted up with the Terminix man who was going to Ocracoke to do his rounds until we all realized "oh, shit, we're loading!!" and everyone made a run for their vehicles. This is why I had pictures of the beautiful sunrise coming up over the ocean, from the ferry, with a bugs butt in front of me. I know, I could have actually gotten out of the van and walked up and had the "cliche" picture, but at 6AM the fact that we were watching the sun come up over a bugs butt just made me laugh hysterically. Butch having had some caffeine in his system, was actually kind of seeing my humor. (well, maybe just a little-there might have been some eye rolling involved)

So we got into Ocracoke and got some breakfast at the Creekside and met up with Wade (your captain) got all the paperwork filled out and off to Portsmith we went. We dropped anchor and waded in, applied massive amounts of ddt and treked off to the gators. Oh, did I tell you this was an ATV tour of Portsmith? Oh, Butch was all over that.

Notice, he's still carrying a coffee cup? On the boat across the sound and all.

First up, shelling. Man, can I tell you, as much problems as Hanna caused, one thing she did was deposit shells on the beach like you would not believe. I got 2 shopping bags of conch (welk) shells. Whites, beiges, and a bunch of black ones. Left and right handers, which are just different kinds of welk. Butch picked up probably 20 scallop shells of all colors. We even found some Scotch Bonnets. Didn't find a whole one, but found almost a whole one. It was just unbelievable.

Holding up some of the bounty.

You don't find many beaches with this many people on them.

Butch eeking out every bit of power from the atv.

He actually let me drive.

Okay, I jumped in the drivers seat when he was picking up a shell and wouldn't get out.

Part II-The Village.....later.