Adventures continue...

Living in a new state offers many opportunities to learn and do.  We are just completing our first year in Delaware and, as my abundant energy no longer has work to focus on, I am planning events and activities like mad. 

We are just beginning to understand what it means to live in a state with an ocean coastline.  On Saturday, we went to a training session with MERR, or Marine Education, Research and Rehabilitation Institute.  We think it should be called MERRI, but hey, no one consulted us.  It is one of federally-mandated 'stranding' organizations in the states that border the Atlantic, meaning it is the 'official' organization that deals with the stranding of marine mammals and sea turtles.  The website is http://merrinstitute.org/. 

The training session was a revelation.  What marine mammals are found in the Delaware Bay and the Delaware part of the Atlantic Ocean?  Dolphins, porpoises, 6 kinds of sea turtles, humpback whales, finback whales, minke whales.  I am not kidding.  Plus sand tiger, spiny dogfish, smooth dogfish and sandbar sharks.  I feel stupid about how agog I am about the fact that the ocean is the ocean, with all the life in the ocean right here. 

So we are going to be part of a stranding event team at some time.  We are 'upstate' in Delaware, so will be called for events in the Delaware River rather than the bay or the ocean proper.  I am very jazzed about the idea of doing anything involved with MERR.  Apparently most events are not helping marine mammals return to the sea, but are perhaps heartbreaking events of ill or dying or dead animals who are necropsied and even buried on the beach. 

Another major attraction for me is that we are surrounded with Civil War sites.  I went to Harpers Ferry on Sunday and it too was amazing.  It's 135 miles from home; not exactly next door, but doable as a day trip.  I drove the few miles in Delaware to Maryland, then went through a tiny bit of Virginia to West Virginia, the location of Harpers Ferry.  I think of it primarily in connection with John Brown and the Civil War, but it has a long history of strategic importance to the US.  It is at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers and in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Very beautiful.  A mere 18 miles to the east is the Antietam battlefield.  No actual Civil War battles occurred at Harpers Ferry, but it was the site of the largest American surrender until World War II.  Confederate soldiers took more than 12,000 Union soldiers into custody in 1862.  It was too cool.  I then drove back to Frederick and had dinner with Paula Larson at Ayse, a very good Turkish/Lebanese restaurant.  It was a happy day. 

I suppose that retirement will one day be much quieter, but as long as we have the wherewithal and interest, we have much to explore.  Lucky!