Recovering - West Island

Margarets, Fairhaven - Click image for large view

Margaret's

Margaret's in Fairhaven, a suggestion from friends, turned out to be a great restaurant. Nana and I got out of the house in good time today and arrived here around 10:30 am - not a real early start but better than we have been doing in the past few weeks. I am recovering from an operation I had on Wednesday - abdominal hernia - 11 incisions - yuk. Getting up and down is the hard part. We chose West Island in Fairhaven because we knew it would be nice and flat and right now climbing is not what I need to be doing, and as a matter of fact I think that the medical folks would like me just resting, but I am so bad at that, so here we are at breakfast in Fairhaven. What a great selection they have on the menu. One of the things that we tried was the blueberry french toast with warm blueberry sauce.

The Nana Mug Shot

The home fries were also exceptional in my opinion, Nana thinks I am just a little crazy when it comes to potatoes, but these were really well done and when I asked, our waitress said that they are prepared with just salt, pepper and paprika..they were very good. The only thing they did not get quite right was my toast - I am also very picky about my toast. I like my toast, well toasted and dry. Most restaurants have a different view of toast and it seems as though I always get just warm bread.. I like crunchy and if it starts to smoke while it is in the toaster then is is just about right. . . again, Nana thinks this is outside the norm. Also I want to mention that the people at Margaret's were wonderful, and our waitress was great.. makes up for last weeks surly waitress. So once we had out fill of breakfast goodies we were off to West Island which is at the very southern tip of Fairhaven, Massachusetts. It was here in Fairhaven that Nana and I had out first apartment back in 1970..but that is a whole other story.

Holly Tree

We parked at an obvious place on Fir Street and began out walk back through the woods on a nice wide and very flat trail. Interestingly the trails here are not marked in any way, so you are just free to wander. I guess they figure that you are on a small island, so how lost could you get really? I am amazed at the Holly trees we have seen since we started our Sunday walks. I always thought of Holly as a bush.. but the Holly trees are really very pretty. After a short while we took a side trail and walked out into a wide low marsh where there were lots of birds feeding - we didn't see anything exotic, but lots of gulls and a couple of egrets and herons. There were also many unidentified small birds around..but that is our fault, as we aren't too good at identifying birds at this point, but willing to learn.

Marsh - looking toward Buzzards Bay

Back on the main trail we continued until we came to a rocky beach and as we began our hike along the beach we came across an abandoned and beached sailboat. Since I was carrying my camera with me, I thought that it would make a good subject for a time lapse. Also, since I am recovering from that operation it was also a good time to sit on a rock for a while and rest up. So while I sat up my camera and fussed with things, Nana went off to continue to walk and explore. I have been having fun shooting these things. This one is not too exciting but here it is. After Nana returned and I got my gear packed up we continued on and came across a site where there was a rope swing and a zip line -- we guessed that this was the work of a younger crowd. Nana tried the zip line which gave me a good laugh - she certainly did better that I would have but we think it is best if we leave these activities to the younger crowd. The woods here are nice to walk in but don't offer the variety of sights we have experienced in other locations, but they do have great beaches and marsh lands, which is always a plus. Many of the side trails that we took just seemed to stop in the middle of nowhere, so we did a lot of backtracking. As we  were approaching the end of our walk, we heard a gurgling sound and it sounded very close. A quick search for the source revealed a white perforated PVD cap coming up out of the ground and gurgling like a bad bathtub drain. We had a good chuckle but still have no idea what was down below making that noise. By the time we got back to the car we had walked a little over  a mile and a half, not bad for a recovering old guy. Maybe a longer walk next week. Below are some more photos of our time on West Island.

At the Marsh

Zip Line Queen

Shooting the time lapse

Our walk

The gurgle pipe