This is a picture of a sunset right off the island we stayed at in the Cheaspeake Bay.
On November 18th at 5am my sister, dad, myself and a bus full of 22 Juniors and Seniors from EMHS left for what would be a 6.5 hour trip to the Chesapeake Bay. Since my dad drives bus for EMHS Myron the biology teacher at EMHS asked him if he could drive for this trip. My dad said yes and asked if my sister and I could come along too, Myron said that would be fine. So on our trip there the directions happened to take us right through downtown Washington DC. The best part was our timing sent us through DC during morning rush hour, mix those two things together and it's going to be stop and go for miles. We finally got to the dock where our boat was to pick us up and take us to Port Isobel at 12:30pm. We formed an assembly line and loaded all of our luggage onto the boat. Then it was a 45 minute boat ride to Port Isobel where we would be staying for the 3 days while we were there. When we reached the island our leaders Willy, Foster, and Deidra showed us our rooms and we unpacked.
After unpacking we were shown the bakery which was a different building used for a dining area and lounging place. Then after having an session on some of the rules and expectations we got back on the boat for our first adventure. Our first fun experience was baiting and setting crab pots. Crab pots are the most common tool to catch crabs with. We baited them with a fish callled menhaden. Before putting the fish in the pots we had to kiss them goodbye and brake them in half. I had a hard time kissing my fish, but it wasn't that bad after it was all done. When we were done we headed back to the island and ate supper. After supper the high schoolers went on a night hike but Kate, my dad, and I chose to go to bed.
The next morning after breakfast was all done we headed off to our next adventure, MARSH MUCKING! Doesn't it sound like fun? Well it was a lot of fun. Lets just say we got muddy and gross. Though we didn't get as muddy as the high schoolers we still had our share of fun. After we got into some cleaner clothes we ate some snacks and got on the boat for our next experience. This time we were going to the neighboring island which was called Tangier Island. The island has a population of about 580 residents. Our boat captain, Captain Charles lives on Tangier Island. There we got to explore the island and see how the lifestyle of the Tangier people was different from ours. There is quite a dramatic difference from the two. While there my dad, sister, and I got to enjoy and share a crab cake. So Delicious!! After exploring we headed back to the island and had lunch. Next, we got back on the boat and gathered our crab pots. And on the way back I got to drive the boat, pretty big job but of course I could handle it :) haha. We recieved little over 30 crads but we could only keep 28. So for supper we had striped bass which Captain Charles and Foster had caught during the day our crabs we got.
The next day which was our last day we had breakfast and then we went scraping. Scraping is where you take the boat out to a shallow area and drag a box like thing with holes alongside the boat. After about 5 minutes you take it out of the water and dump all the stuff out of it. And what you find is amazing, sea horses, crabs, shrimp, and all sorts of macro-invertebrates. We then put the creatures into jugs and took them back to the island. When we got back to the island we dumped all the creatures into a bigger tank that already had fish and sea horses in it. We then started to pack and clean up. After the 45 minute boat ride to where the bus was we ate lunch and said our goodbyes and we were on our way back to Harrisonburg. We got back home at around 8:30pm. What a fun fun trip and I am so thankful I got to be apart of it.
Have a very Happy Thanksgiving! Don't eat too much:)
