First Day at Pirate's Island

[Transcribed from video]

Great Captain's Island in Greenwich opened for the summer today. It was a chilly day, but I wanted to make sure that we got first crack at the best seashells on the shore there. I packed us up and headed out to Greenwich. Alex surprised me at the dock. He asked for water in his open mouth cup, the small blue Precious Moments cup. He did great in drinking cold water from it.

As usual, Alex was quietly enjoying the ferry trip over.  The ferry's engine is quite loud, so he's not all that happy about being on the boat with that noise. Once on the island, he realized that this year, he would be able to walk around the island by himself. (Sorta. There was Puppy Leash in use).  A storm was brewing, though. The sky turned dark and the winds were strong. Our trip would sadly be cut short.  I took us down whatever paths I felt we could before the rain began and the island closed for weather.

On a path from the beach, Alex spotted a bunch of long stalked grasses with flowers. They reminded him of the long grasses in the cultured circle in Grandma's garden in Florida.  When we were last there, he and Grandma had lots of fun pulling out dead grasses and weeds from the circle.  He looked these grasses over and said "Grandma!" and started to pull at them.  Well, these grasses weren't the dead overgrowth that Grandma had been pulling out. They didn't come out so easily.

"It's stuck!" Alex declared while he unsuccessfully tried to pull at the grasses.

Then the thunder started.  I asked Alex if he heard the thunder and told him that we had to go home.  First he said "Thunder." and I told him that it was thunder and we had to go home.  He wasn't too happy about that. "Noooo. Crab! Crab!" he cried, referring to the part of the shore we call "Crab Beach" for the crab shells we so often find there.  I convinced him that we had to go to a beach anyway to get the boat and we would see more crab shells there.  Our path took us past some water fountains and garbage cans in a picnic area. The crabs were soon forgotten, but he wasn't any happier about leaving the garbage cans and recycling bins behind and, especially, not that water fountain.

We'll be back another day soon. 

June 15, 2009