Day 36, 22 June

51 visitors

Our new mascot at the Donkey house

After just 4 hours of sleep I awoke and checked on Sacatar in the living room and looked at my emails. I was going to return to bed but Dick was up and making breakfast of eggs, bacon and English muffins. I raised the flag and took Sac out for her morning walk. The day was going to be gorgeous – warm and calm. By then Fred was up and we all had breakfast together. After breakfast we decided to all go down to Cobblestone beach to discard the lobster shells. When we got down to the kiosk there was a group from a tour boat that we greeted. It was a family of five some from Seattle and grandfather who was local. The Seattle family knew of our New Dungeness Lighthouse and I was wearing a T-shirt from there. Fred and I lead them up to the house for a tour while Dick took the lobster shells down to Cobblestone. As we were approaching the lighthouse there was a cute little garter snake slithering quickly through the grass. I reached over and grabbed it gently. The oldest boy wanted to hold him so I gave him carefully to him. His mother, though not fond of snakes, took pictures of him holding the little guy and he eventually gave him back to me. I walked over to the tall grass and gave him his freedom back to his grassy island domain. Up we went into the tower for a nice tour. While going up I heard a strange little sound, which turned out to be beads scattering and going everywhere. The little girl’s bracelet had broken and the plastic beads went flying everywhere. We all ran around scurrying to retrieve them and pick them up. Later as we went to the bottom we kept finding a few more.

Flowers popping up in flower box down by the cove

Others began to arrive on private boats or Ethan’s ferry. So we were quite busy all afternoon entertaining our visitors with tours and selling goodies in the gift shop. It was fun to see all the people enjoying themselves and marveling at the precious lens and lacy wrought iron staircase. When they went outside the tower and saw the 360-degree views they were breath taken. This is what is so fun in talking to the visitors and to see them react like star struck children with that sense of wonder and excitement on this magical isle. They do see and feel the serenity and uniqueness of Seguin. There were again the constant questions of how did you get this job and we patiently told them. We had many kind words of praise and support from everyone, which was very nice to hear. Some even noticed a special little resident in the Donkey house.

Another gorgeous sunset

Eventually the crowds thinned and that is when I felt exhausted from the lack of sleep and fun of hosting. A nice young couple had canoed from Popham Beach, and were wandering and waiting around for the currents to turn and I gave them a nice long tour.  Dick and Fred were at the cove waiting with others for the ferry to arrive. I managed to slap some chicken salad sandwiches together and grab some chips, bananas and apples for a late lunch to bring down to the cove. We were starving. So we waited in the warm sunshine munching our lunch and chatting with the visitors. The ferry came about 3:30 pm and took everyone away including Dick. We waved goodbye to everyone and greeted a couple on a collapsible kayak that came from a nice new powerboat. We lead them up the trail and Fred gave them a tour in the lighthouse. I checked on Sac and then puttered around the gift shop, restocking and taking inventory. The couple came in and toured the museum and bought a kite. Now we were both really tired and needed a nap badly. We each slept outside in the late afternoon sun with Sac snoozing with us on the grass. I awoke 1.5 hours later and Fred was vacuuming the house.

I started to work on email and the blog and got interrupted by another ever-changing gorgeous sunset. Back to the blog, dinner and bed. Another exceptionally beautiful day on our “turtle” island.