Dolphins, wild fires and oysters .....

not necessarily in that order. The last you heard from us we were in Gulf Shores, AL visiting with Pete's friend Dick. The second day there we rented a boat for a couple hours to look around the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) and Perdido Bay. We went up Ingram's bayou looking for wild life but didn't find any there.

Around the corner, in an open part of the ICW we found some dolphins playing. There are some tourist, dolphin sightseeing boats that work that area. One of them was circling around so we knew something was up. Sure enough there were 4 dolphin in the area. They are hard to photograph but here's one attempt.

Here are the crew of the rental, pontoon boat. The boat had a 90HP engine so it went pretty fast.

That night, Dick suggested Wintzell's Oyster House for dinner. Pete loves his oysters and hadn't any for a couple weeks. He did try some at a Red Lobster in Denver. After having this plate of oysters, which during happy hour were only $5 per dozen, Pete declared that his best meal of the trip!

The next planned stop was down into Florida to Orlando and Key West. Pete got to thinking that he had some business to take care of back home and that Key West in hurricane season is not the best time to be there. He also wants to spend September in Chatham (on Cape Cod). So we started heading Northeast.

The first day we got from Gulf Shores, AL to Statesboro, GA (with a stop in Tifton, GA for gas). The next day (yesterday) we left Statesboro in what was called clear skies but the low level moisture hadn't really burned off. So we only got a short distance to Orangeburg, SC before we had to stop and wait. An hour or so later the clouds had risen to about 3-4K feet so we took off heading Northeast again.

The plan was to get to Norfolk, VA. The preflight briefer told us about a wild fire on the South side of Norfolk that we would have to avoid. The GPS actually drew the TFR on the screen in red, indicating the area to avoid. It got the data from the XM satellite signal. Pretty cool.

Here's a picture of the fire in front of the plane.

As we approached Norfolk from the Southwest the smoke was very visible in front of us and right near the airport we wanted to use. The plane has plenty of gas (5 hours worth) so we continued over the entrance to Chesapeake Bay on to Salisbury, MD. It was our longest flight of the trip, 3.8 hours.

The Chesapeake Bay bridge.

So we are now in MD but today the weather in the Northeast is pretty unstable so we will be here for a second night. Hopefully tomorrow we can fly around Philly and NYC then up to Northampton to see Ann, Kevin, Nat and Sarah.