Horseshoes and high temperatures

After the unplanned stop off in Philadelphia we finally managed to get a car to make the trip down to Delaware Bay. Fi was significantly braver than me and agreed to do the driving which she was great at. It seems our accents are a bit difficult to understand out here, when asking the car rental dude how far it was to Slaughter Beach he thought we asked if he wanted to come with us, he replied in a slightly flustered manner thanks but he had to work - it must have been the pampas grass sticking out of Fi's bag!

Delaware Bay was massively hot (30c+)  but the bird and horseshoe crabs were amazing. At the Dupont (terrible I know) visitor centre we saw ospreys swooping low overhead, clapper rails, willets and numerous gulls (including laughing and ringed).

The crabs were amazing, although we did not hit the full moon, high tide pinnacle there were masses knocking about. The noise their shells made on the rocks was amazing, just like real horseshoes and they really look as if they are from another planet. As its mating season there were loads of small males pursuing the larger females.  Their blue blood has been harvested since 1970's as it is highly sensitive to bacteria and is used in ensuring the safety of medical products http://www.horseshoecrab.org/med/med.html

The campsite we stayed at was really cool, sandy and wooded. Each plot had a fire pit and picnic bench and there were several WW2 observation towers you could climb (view below).

The people camping opposite had a really cool dog named Willy, when we went over to meet him it turned out the owners were really nice, Sharon and Albert. They had a really ace portable hammock we were incredibly jealous of. When we left Albert gave us a couple of his CD's for our journey home which was really cool - checkout his music here http://www.albertsimpson.com/

On a light night walk we saw a white tailed deer and heard the amazing sound of a common nighthawk calling (sadly they weren't displaying like this) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qpsyjmda5Q

It was so hot in the tent I couldn't sleep at all despite pouring water over myself at regular intervals - I think I would have been cooler in a sauna. Even when the sun went down it kept on baking and this probably wasn't helped by my numerous mosquitoes and gnat bites - I don't know what it is but they find me really tasty.

Fi at the visitor centre

Crab action