Day Trip to Tangier Island

I've been trying to check some things off my summer bucket list here and there, and one of the big things for this year was a day trip out to Tangier Island. We had to reschedule a couple times, but the weather, our schedules, and the airplane finally all cooperated and in early August, we were off!

Mark got permission from Patuxent Approach to cut through their restricted areas, so we were able to cut about 15 minutes off the flight time. This is on left downwind for runway 20; you can just about see the whole town in the picture.

Success! I made a nice short landing and put the plane away while Mark set up the bike and scooter.

The very fancy FBO at TGI.   :)    We put out parking fee in the box, then biked and scootered into town for some lunch.

I'll eventually try one of the other restaurants on the island, but it's hard to pass up a crab cake sandwich at Lorraine's. We managed to beat the lunch rush, which meant I barely had to wait at all to stuff this delicious sandwich into my face.

A few minutes of biking and scootering past Lorraine's brought us to the beach.

Ahhhh.   :)

Our beach setup. The umbrella folds up and fits very nicely in the back of the plane. I really like this beach; while it's a little narrow, it's very long, and the water is warm and fairly calm since it's the Chesapeake Bay. Even better, we're usually the only people hanging out for any length of time; once in a while a few people might wander by, but for the most part we get the entire beach to ourselves.

One of my pilot buddies told me there's a shipwreck near the end of the beach, so we decided to walk down to find it. We passed a bunch of marshy areas along the way.

A whole bunch of walking later, we found it. It looked a lot closer when I saw it from the air! At any rate, it was neat to see up close, and the water on this side of the beach was really nice and calm.

Looking down toward the beach. There was a couple with a boat at the very end, as well as a whole bunch of birds. We enjoyed the view for a few minutes, then walked back to our towels to hang out and swim for a bit.

It would have been nice to stay all day, but we knew we had to get home to the doggies at some point. We packed up our things and said goodbye to the beach. (What you can't tell from the picture is that the sand was lava hot. Even with flip flops, that was a toasty walk back to the bike!)

We enjoyed the views of the marshes as we made our way back into town...

...and stopped for a few minutes at an ice cream place to grab some watermelon water ice before heading back to the airport.

Mark got permission to cut through the restricted areas again, so it was another relatively quick (if hazy) flight back. I'm really glad it all worked out; it was a fun day trip!