My new adventure as the caretaker here on Protection Island is shaping up quite nicely.

Yes, it has been quite a change going from being the caretaker on the spit. There, they have approximately 80,000 to 100,000 visitors a year. Here, it is just me. I would say that is quite a change.

I went about 11 days straight of being out here. Last Sunday afternoon, I was able to finally go back over to the mainland. I stayed at a friend’s house over the weekend and helped him do some landscaping by running an excavator for him to move some big rocks. We worked a couple of 10 hour days and got quite a bit done actually. I am sure I will be going back over to help him do some more of it as well. I’m really kind of anxious to see what it’s going to look like when it is done.

After that, Wednesday I plan to come back out to the island. I had to do a lot of personal errands before I came back out, one of which was to buy groceries. Another important item was to go to the post office, which I had not done in two weeks. A couple other errands I had to run was eating some Chinese food, some Mexican food, a burger, but unfortunately the Thai restaurant was closed. That will be this week.

It can be rather difficult planning on doing things when you are so dependent on the weather to be able to go back to the mainland. Last week I got pretty lucky. While I was in on the mainland we had gale force winds out here at the island. That is not good weather for a smaller boat to be out in and I was happy to avoid it. My timing was actually really good both going back to the mainland and coming back out to the island. Two days after I got here there were gale force winds.

I have been staying fairly busy. There have been plenty of maintenance things to do around here, such as mowing grass, running the trimmer, watching the dock almost daily, and doing some projects around the cabin. As the weather gets nicer, I will be out on the water more, patrolling around the island to keep people away the 200 yard minimum. It will be interesting spending most of the day out on the water in a boat. I will also be helping out the biologist with some projects out here as well.

It is really going to be an interesting summer, with even more new experiences coming my way!

I am also looking for some hard bolt on saddlebags for my motorcycle. I plan on doing some weekend trips on the V65 this summer and I want a secure place to lock my belongings like rain gear. Plus, going to the grocery store and running errands around town it would also be nice to have locking bags and not have to haul everything with me or worry about it getting stolen. I am also looking for a sissy bar bag, and possibly a tank bag. I am trying to buy used things to save some money, but I am not having a whole lot of luck with the saddlebags yet. Whatever I saddlebags I get, I will have to fabricate some sort of mounting hardware or bracket for them to fit on my bike. I have cloth saddlebags, but they have no security.

My youngest daughter told me about two TV series called “Long Way Round” and “Long Way Down”, two shows about motorcycle travels – really long trips. Kind of gives me the urge for a road trip.