Day 7: Lights Will Guide You Home
With another early morning wake up, we all rolled out to the sea turtle hospital where we settled into our morning routine of feeding, sweeping, scooping, mopping, scrubbing and, well, you get the point now. We had another round of salt talks (which is what we've taken to calling our salt box interludes), with Friday team-leader Pam, who had just returned from a week-long whale watching trip in Baja California and clocked our Terrific Terrapin Tub-Turning Pit Crew at a record 55 seconds per tank.
After a fairly standard morning service, we all returned home for some much needed lunch and R&R. I (Alvin) found myself taking a short siesta on the hammock drifting away to the sound of the crashing waves right beside Donald who picked a particularly luxurious location on the floor of the deck. At around three o'clock in the afternoon, we headed back to the turtle hospital to help set up for the inauguration ceremony for the new segment of the Mountains-to-Sea trail. Food was laid out and education stations re-manned as hundreds of volunteers, hikers, and administrators came for a tour and reception at our very own sea turtle hospital. Donald and I tag-teamed the anatomy station where we got to see the surprise on the faces of the guests as the size of a loggerhead's brain cavity really set in for them.
Tours all wrapped up, we took a momentary breather where we snacked on some truly delicious leftover snacks brought in by the volunteers including a killer jam crumble and some of the sweetest blueberries we had ever tasted before we went out to enjoy a celebratory dinner with Jean at the Camino Real restaurant nearby. With a the Duke versus North Dakota State basketball game going on the in background, we talked about our interests, Jean's fierce loyalty to Duke basketball (she is not a fan of UNC I can tell you that), and her family. Towards the end of the meal, Jean advised us on the importance of finding balance in each aspect of our lives before inviting us all to come watch the turtle release scheduled for June 5th and even offered us a place to sleep provided we brought our own sleeping bags!
After dinner, Zabrina treated us all with an ice cream cake from Publix (of which Ian and I adore the shopping carts of) and we all took a moment to simply gaze up into the clear night sky from the porch out back. The stars had never seemed brighter as Coldplay's "Fix You" quietly played in the background. All of a sudden, we all directed our eyes towards a growing bright mass in the distance as an orange moon revealed itself over the ocean horizon. With the final chorus fading away, we stood there, mesmerized by the twinkling reflections in the tides below. Just as many generations of sea turtles have been led by the pale moonlight towards their ocean home, we close the final chapter of our trip, with the lights guiding us home.
Signing off for one last time,
Alvin and Bebe
After a fairly standard morning service, we all returned home for some much needed lunch and R&R. I (Alvin) found myself taking a short siesta on the hammock drifting away to the sound of the crashing waves right beside Donald who picked a particularly luxurious location on the floor of the deck. At around three o'clock in the afternoon, we headed back to the turtle hospital to help set up for the inauguration ceremony for the new segment of the Mountains-to-Sea trail. Food was laid out and education stations re-manned as hundreds of volunteers, hikers, and administrators came for a tour and reception at our very own sea turtle hospital. Donald and I tag-teamed the anatomy station where we got to see the surprise on the faces of the guests as the size of a loggerhead's brain cavity really set in for them.
Tours all wrapped up, we took a momentary breather where we snacked on some truly delicious leftover snacks brought in by the volunteers including a killer jam crumble and some of the sweetest blueberries we had ever tasted before we went out to enjoy a celebratory dinner with Jean at the Camino Real restaurant nearby. With a the Duke versus North Dakota State basketball game going on the in background, we talked about our interests, Jean's fierce loyalty to Duke basketball (she is not a fan of UNC I can tell you that), and her family. Towards the end of the meal, Jean advised us on the importance of finding balance in each aspect of our lives before inviting us all to come watch the turtle release scheduled for June 5th and even offered us a place to sleep provided we brought our own sleeping bags!After dinner, Zabrina treated us all with an ice cream cake from Publix (of which Ian and I adore the shopping carts of) and we all took a moment to simply gaze up into the clear night sky from the porch out back. The stars had never seemed brighter as Coldplay's "Fix You" quietly played in the background. All of a sudden, we all directed our eyes towards a growing bright mass in the distance as an orange moon revealed itself over the ocean horizon. With the final chorus fading away, we stood there, mesmerized by the twinkling reflections in the tides below. Just as many generations of sea turtles have been led by the pale moonlight towards their ocean home, we close the final chapter of our trip, with the lights guiding us home.
Signing off for one last time,
Alvin and Bebe
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