Nowhere Bound: I Am Promised Relaxation and Get Suffering

We’ve been moving to a new spot each day. The intracoastal has been a lot of work for me - you won’t believe the number of jet skis and fishing boats with huge wakes I’ve had to tell off! And then there’s the bridges. We’ve never hit a bridge, but each time we approach, the LHI screeches and says “Oh, Jesus!” even though my name is Hastings, and I have to get up and bark. The good news is the water is calm and not sick making like the ocean. Until yesterday, when they decided the ocean was good and bridges and jet skis were bad. I hunkered down and prayed for it all to be over. My supplications were heard and once again we lived long enough to eat dinner. What a relief.

Today, they said it would be a relaxing day. Finally! Of course, I should know better than to believe them. They said we’d do a quick trip to the other side of the bight to see the lighthouse. This looked like fun! I love me a good dinghy ride! I led the way and they followed.

This looks like fun!

Unfortunately, instead of running full steam to the ocean, they had to keep stopping to “read interpretive signs”. This is about the most dull activity anyone has ever invented. I’d rather be dead than have to know the difference between a welk shell and a clam shell, but the humans find it fascinating. Little things please little minds.

Cape Lookout Lighthouse

Cape Lookout from the Atlantic Beach

Lightkeeper's Accommodations, Now Museum

Bight-side beach

After torturing me like this for, I don’t know, HOURS, we got in the dinghy to head home. This is good news, because it’s nearing dinner time, and I’ll have to remind them to feed me by scratching at the fridge. It started getting wavier and wavier and the bow was slamming. The LHI said her back was getting compression injuries. A terrifying cloud darkened the sky while the temperature dropped 15 degrees.

Following a rude discussion about “transferring the weight” LHI decided to drive so DDD could hold down the bow. Towering waves broke over the dinghy and drenched all of us to the core. This is an even worse death than death by sign reading. I should never have complained about the sign reading. It wasn't that bad! In fact, I’d like to go back and read even more about the difference between horses and ponies!

LHI and DDD kept dementedly smiling at each other as water in the dinghy rose higher. I’m in DDD’s lap, but no one can save me. We’re all going to go down to the depths within sight of shore, exactly like the shipwrecked sailors we read about on one of those god forsaken signs. And we’ll leave un-eaten cheese in the fridge.

Hark! Our boat is in sight! All is not lost. I, by my magnificent refusal to give up despite being in the valley of death have brought us through the storm and to rescue. Of course, because I’m with the humans, the atrocities are not over. I try to lay down and forget my troubles, but they insist on “rinsing the salt out of my fur”. (The salt that should have never been in my fur to begin with, FYI) Then, the skies cleared and the ocean was as flat as a millpond. If only we’d stayed to read more signs about barrier islands being shaped by winds and waves like I wanted to, we could have avoided all this trouble. Instead, I’ve been shaped into a miserable wretch by the winds and the waves. The humans just don’t listen to reason, do they?