A Day of Exploring Friday, June 30, 2006

Today, Erik and I decided to go exploring the island. We had read about a beach called "Step Beach", but on all of the local maps it was conspicuously missing! We had an idea of where it might be, so we took a chance and set out to find it. On our bike ride that day, we found a local gal who knew right where it was! This is a picture of me on the steps on the way down to "Step Beach". It turned out to be a lovely place, very calm and beautiful water. We napped on this beach for a few hours today.

After the beach, we set out on our bikes again. We happened upon this amazing bike trail. It went for miles, all through woods and grasslands! If only we had found this earlier in the week, I have a feeling we would have made this a daily ritual. It was so much fun! It's hard to tell in this picture, but Erik is way down at the bottom of a hill after speeding down. This was definitely one of our favorite spots.

Ok, this picture is cool because we set the timer on the camera and in only 10 seconds, Erik ran to the tree, climbed it, then posed! Dude, he must be part monkey.

Dos Beaches Were Cold, Mayn Thursday, June 29, 2006

We spent the morning on the Beach in Madaket. Ate some lunch, ran around, threw sand in Clint's eye...it was a lot of fun. The waves were huge and there were even some people surfing. Here's a terribly-staged slow-motion Baywatch-esque shot for your viewing pleasure. (Is Erik going to throw up?)

On the ride home, Sonya and I hopped off of the bus to tour a little bit of the island on our own. The rest of the crew hit the chocolatier in town...AGAIN!! Sony and I visited the oldest house on the island, which was built in 1686 and belonged to Jethro Coffin. After that we met up with the group and biked it out to the Sankaty Head lighthouse to get some night shots.

We stayed up playing our new favorite game again. Sonya lost the first Farkel and was introduced to the Pen 15 club (you'll have to ask her to explain). Another consequence was for the loser to allow everbody else to slap them in the face with a piece of lettuce. Clint lost that round. We tried our best to bruise him good, but Erik swung and missed - forfeitting his turn. Here's a great action shot of Rachel laying a good one across his cheek. And you'd think she'd have gone easy on him with it being their 4th anniversary and all.

A Night in Town Wednesday, June 28, 2006

We Spent the evening in town shopping and indulging in chocolate covered cranberries! Downtown Nantucket is really neat, with it's cobblestone streets and historic homes and churches.

We ate dinner at "The Tavern" down by the wharf. It's official...Erik now enjoys seafood! Especially Alaskan Halibut. We also grilled some fresh Nantucket Flounder the other night, which he was very fond of. I ended up liking it too, after I doused it in lemon juice. (If you know us, you know that we usuallly HATE seafood!)

As a nice ending to our evening in town, we took a stroll down the piers to see all of the huge boats in the harbour. What a beautiful place!

A Special Visit Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Our friend Tonia Hayes came out to the island today for a visit! She lives in Rhode Island, so she just took the ferry in for the day. We had so much fun catching up and seeing some of the sights in downtown Nantucket. This picture is taken in front of an old church, with one of the most spectacular views of the whole island from the steeple. We climbed all 94 steps up to the top. Here's a view through one of the binoculars...

We ended the evening tonight with our nightly ice cream run to the Sconset Market.  We've been throwing down the Ben & Jerry's every single night!

Biking to Quidnet Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Yesterday we biked to Quidnet Beach (about 3 miles one way). What a gorgeous day! We had to stop along the path to get a picture in front of the Skanky light house again.

We found some cool sand dunes at this beach, so naturally we decided to hurl ourselves over the edge and catch the action in mid-air.