Sea Turtles, Authors and Stripers

This morning I woke DJ up around 9 am. It was a sunny morning and not to warm ( yet). The weather forecast for July 4th calls for possible rain and thunderstorms. So I headed out to do somedaytrips today.I got him up so we could take a kayak trip in an area of Upper Narragansett Bay known to have sea turtles. This species of turtle are called diamondback terrapin. Sorry I can't tell you where as I was sworn to secrecy. They are not large like Myrtle the Turtle at the New England Aquarium. However, I believe any chance to see a sea turtle is pretty cool. I've never seen one before and keep forgetting about going on this daytrip.

He put in about 10am and headed toward the ocean. Within a couple minutes we saw a few turtle heads. We were hoping they would be out sunning themselves and get a picture of them on land. Unfortunately the best we could do is see some heads. I think the water is warm enough now they don't need to be sunning themselves. Even if they do in the morning we got to the area to late. None the less we saw 5 turtle heads. We also saw tons of ospreys. At one point there were 10 in the sky plus others on nests. The area we paddled through was a beautiful marsh. I am surprised I didn't know about it. We planned on paddling about an hour. We ended up staying out almost three. It was warm on the water. We both used some sunscreen. As two dumbasses, we both had on cargo shorts on. We could have had a lot of fun if we wore bathing suits instead.


After we got home, I called the Minuteman National Historical Park in Concord, MA to see if there were any spaces left on the 3 pm tour of the Wayside. The Wayside is a house in Concord were Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Alcotts lived ( Louisa May wrote Little Women). Tours are given by the National Park Service but reservations are recommended. To my surprise space was available. I made reservations and we jumped in the car.

The tour was awesome. I learned a lot about the Authors and the house. It absolutely amazes me that so much talent was in Concord at one time. Imagine the Alcotts, Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau all being friends. On top of that Longfellow and Herman Melville ( Moby Dick) were friends with Hawthorne. It blows me away. Pictures were not allowed in the house. After the tour I took some pictures of the outside of the house. We didn't stay up in Concord after that. After the tour we just came home.

About 7:30 I left to go fishing. I knew I'd be alone in the evening all day. DJ was sure to be out and my friend Laurie was in Newport. I just wasn't sure what kind of fish I'd fish for. I chose stripers because high tide was 9:30. Also I hadn't fished for them in quite some time. I chose a good high tide spot in the upper bay. I was not the only one with this idea. There were 8 cars in the parking lot. Although the water was rough and bait was present of all of us, I was the only one to get a hit. It was a decent schoolie but it came off at my feet. After dark and no other hits, I went to East Providence to make a few casts. I caught one schoolie about 20 inches. After not getting anything else in the next fifteen minutes, I headed home.

Today was a long but fun day. I really enjoyed our kayak trip. I will definitely do that again. I have wanted to go to The Wayside for years. It was the last thing I wanted to do in Concord. I think I have gone to every other attraction ( other than fish at Whites Pond). As for fishing, I was kind of jonesing too. I didn't fish yesterday, so I was really missing the water.

The picture of the diamondback terrapin is from google images. I WISH I could have gotten a shot like that !