Polar bears in peril

As the climate gets warmer, the ice sheets that polar bears depend on are shrinking, causing polar bears to have to swim farther to find food. Cubs are starving to death, and adult polar bears have drowned because they could not reach the retreating ice that they depend on. In 2006 the IUCN listed the polar bear as vulnerable.

Look here and here to learn more about the polar bears' plight, and to find out how to take action to help protect the polar bear and its habitat. Click here to send a message to the US Fish and Wildlife Service supporting their proposal for increased protections for polar bears. Click here to urge your senators and representative to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the most important on-shore denning habitat for polar bears (and an important place for a lot of other wildlife).

Becky's visit to Beaufort

Last weekend my friend Becky came all the way from Minnesota to visit me in North Carolina. We hadn't seen each other in a very long time, and it was a lot of fun to hang out again. The weather was beautiful, so we got to do a lot of playing outside. We went kayaking along the sound between the Beaufort water front and Carrot Island. Just a few minutes into our paddle we spotted wild horses on Carrot Island, and stepped ashore to get a closer look.

Becky photographing the wild horses on Carrot Island.


We were also lucky to see an ibis.

We spent an afternoon lounging on the beach in Fort Macon State Park in Atlantic Beach, NC.

We learned about the history of Beaufort. Many of the homes, including the one I live in, are historic. Some date back as far as the 1700s. We found the legendary Hammock House, where the infamous pirate Blackbeard supposedly stayed when he was in port. Many people who visit Beaufort and take the pirate tour or the ghost tour say they see ghosts at that house, and it's only a couple of blocks from my house - creepy! We learned more about Blackbeard at the North Carolina Maritime Museum. The ship that is believed to have been Blackbeard's is shipwrecked off the coast of Atlantic Beach. We also toured the Old Burying Ground, which contains graves dating as far back the early 1700s.

We took a day trip to Ocracoke Island, one of North Carolina's Outer Banks that is part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. You can only get to the island by a ferry, which we took from Cedar Island. As the ferry neared Silver Lake Harbor in the town of Ocracoke, we spotted dolphins all throughout the channel. I caught a lot of them on video:




We took bikes over on the ferry, and rode around the town of Ocracoke, where we saw the Ocracoke lighthouse.

Then we rode our bikes out to the beach, where we had a picnic lunch, soaked up the sun, walked along the beach, and collected some seashells. We wanted to stay all day, but we had to get back to catch the last ferry back to Cedar Island at 4:00pm.


On Becky's last night in Beaufort, we were inspired to delve a little deeper into the local pirate lore. We took a quiz online to find out what our pirate names are. Becky is Dread Pirate Bonny, and I am Mad Jenny Bonny. To go with our pirate names we found a pirate dictionary
to help us get even more into the spirit. Arrgh!

Thanks for coming, Becky! I be seein' ye again soon, Matey!

To see all of my pictures from Becky's trip click here. (Click 'map' to see all the places we explored.)