It's Dolphin Day!

It’s Wednesday… (I know it’s Thursday morning, but the wifi was crashing last night so I couldn’t upload). We’re up and we all head out on our bikes to the Creekside Cafe for breakfast, "the best breakfast in town"...

BP on her trike as we head to breakfast

Patti outside the Creekside - a parrothead sign!

We read the menu and it seems pretty normal. They do have a crab omelet (which BM orders) and a prime rib omelet (which I order), but the rest is just breakfast. I asked our waiter (who looks like Ethan from Survivor) what is the one thing that we can't leave this place without eating. His response? "I'm not sure that there's anything. (Pause to think) Um maybe the blah, blah, blah" (I tuned out because it was the thing that was like the grand slam at Denny's).. "Um, that's a good deal". Well I'm not looking for a good deal - I'm looking for creme brulee french toast!

While we’re waiting on our food, the Brittanys are reading the blog from the day before and they’ll laugh randomly, and I have to ask what they're laughing at. Its nice to reflect on our vacation - even it was just yesterday. J

The food is not spectacular - Dana is pleased with her normal french toast, the steak omelet is PACKED with steak and onions. Its like a philly cheesesteak omelet, a little greasy... The cheese grits are hard and not cheesy... the biscuits and gravy are a little doughy. Patti and BP played it safe and got a normal omelet and were satisfied not wowed, but not disgusted). Which brings us to the crab omelet. Its like a crab cake in your eggs and cheese (and later we discuss it and it’s literally like someone took a leftover crab cake and chopped it up on the grills and rolled it into the egg. In the first bite that seems ok (not amazing, but ok) – but upon following bites it becomes just really fishy and gross.. It turns the stomach a bit - BM needs a bathroom and asks Ethan for directions - he gets all stiff and wide eyed like he's come home high and trying to hide something from his parents, "Down and to the right" - but we think that it was more in reaction to the customers at the table next to us. He moves right into apologizing to them for their scrambled eggs taking so long. They got there just after us and have no food yet. He’s not a very good waiter.

Dana's french toast... nothing like yesterday.

My steak omelet - it's basically a philly cheesesteak sandwich with egg subbing for the bread... no multi-colored potatoes.. but the biscuit was good.

We get out of there and take advantage of the cool morning to bike around to a few more shops that we haven’t hit yet. We just love the little puppies that the owners have in their shops, and it’s fun to look at all the original artwork and stuff that’s been locally made, there is jewelry, pottery, hand-carved and hand-painted items everywhere. We went to a thrift store and I found something that I couldn’t leave behind – a raccoon paw bottle opener. A real raccoon paw… with a REAL bottle opener! And it was only two bucks. We went back and got a few shirts that we'd had our eyes on and BM and I got a couple of slushies before heading back to the house to get ready to go to the beach. We’re getting our bearings around town and are much more confident traveling independently, so when one person is done with a shop they just head back to the house.

Outside one of the cute shops

How much would you pay for this hat? (if the answer isn't $54.95, then keep walking). But BP looks cute!

The hammock chair... love at first sight

The fresh squeezed orange juice slushie, and the mermaid's delight (fresh strawberry slushie float) - yum!! It was like ice cream topped with frozen strawberries.

Today I really don’t have much to blog about – it was breakfast (blah), shopping, beach (yay) and then the dolphin cruise. Hmmm… ok, that seems like a lot more than it did in my head. Well we get ready to head out to the beach and we go back to the one that is across from the ponies that Dana and Patti went to yesterday and liked. They’re right, it’s MUCH better – the water isn’t as crushing, the waves not as high, and we were able to float around on our rafts. The waves do bring us in, but its more like the wave pool than the wash cycle. BP is a little skiddish in the water and spends most of the time covered up completely to avoid further sun burn. BM even wears a shirt today to cover her red (that’s big for her). At about 3:30 we head back to the house to get ready for the cruise. We have to be there at 6:30 and we all have to shower and eat.

Heading down the boardwalk to the "pony" beach

While the other girls shower, I make up a quick batch of spaghetti for us for dinner so that we can get something in our bellies but not take up too much time. We bought some meat, sauce and pasta the day we got to the island in case we had a night where we just wanted to have a cheap, relaxing dinner at the house. It worked out perfectly.

We drove over to Jolly Roger to meet our captain. It’s a small boat that holds a max of 6 people – perfect for us. I honestly didn’t have much hope of seeing a dolphin, but Dana really had her heart set on it. Her sign name is a dolphin for pete’s sake. There were a few times when I faked her out (and mostly not on purpose) – I just saw movement and asked what it was… not a dolphin.
We're on a BOAT!!!

Our captain - BM thinks he looks like Micahel J. Fox, Dana think Rick Ankiel...

Our captain was very nice, a native of the island that seems to have his hand in just about every kind of business involving the water. He has two of these boats, fishing boats, banana boats, parasailing, jet skis… and I think more. He took us down the length of the island and out to the inlet and back – we looked to the horizon for anything that looked like anything and saw nothing. We had really kind of given up on seeing anything and BM started chatting with him about tips for shelling (he said to go as the tide is leaving, and that the high tide cart is always off by 90 minutes, and the best beach was the beach that we just came from near the ponies)… but in mid-sentence he points behind us and sees a dolphin! We all turn just in time to see it jump out of the water. I catch it on video, but each time we see it, it’s fairly far off and way too fast to catch on a still camera. We see one dolphin about five times – or see five dolphins one time. He says that normally there is more than one and that they play together nearer to the boat… BUT he tells that the people that are on the “big dolphin cruise ship” haven’t seen any at all. And even though it wasn’t an up close and personal sighting, it was a great time. We loved the boat ride, the salty sea spray, the company, the sunset, and the excitement of “Oh, there he is!”.

The sun setting....

This is the pic we have of the dolphin... its the dark dolphin-shaped spot on the right of the picture. It looked MUCH closer in person. Keep in mind this was captured on a wide shot video with very little zoom (zoomed out to catch a wider field of possible dolphins)... so while it may not be thrilling to you, it is to Dana. :)

This is what a boat does to hot sexy hair...

We get ice cream on the way home and once we get there we all change into our comfy clothes and settle in to watch “RENT” – but the dvd doesn’t work.. we put in another movie, but we ended up playing a bit of spades. Patti and I love spades, but the Brittanys had never played. We thought BP would really like it, but it was BM that really got into it. Patti tried to go nil on one round and BM and I were able to set her… we screamed a little loud, and its possible we disturbed Dana’s sleep. If we did, I’m sure we’ll find out tmw. Everyone else is in bed and I’m just finishing up the blog while BP sleeps on the couch with The Nanny playing again.

In the morning we’re going to Dajio for breakfast again – Dana has to try that French toast (Ellie has told her she needs to try it – Hi Ellie!). The weather is supposed to be bad tmw, according to our captain, lots of rain, so we’ll play the rest by ear. Night! (or morning!)