Busy Friday!

This morning Bruce, Roberta, Brad, and I road our bikes into town to explore the island.

We stopped for some glamour shots... Brad was having trouble with his bike helmet, apparently.

Whew, there!

Some gulf shots from over by the airport.

I think we really may be in paradise!

We covered almost all of the island... We'll have to ride that last little bit next time.

This afternoon, we took a tour at the Southern Cross Sea Farms, where they raise clams.  We pass this place every time we go into town.  It's an easy 5-10 minute walk from our RV park.

This was our tour guide.  He did a really good job explaining the process to us.

These are the various trays where they wait for spawning to take place.

This is where they grow algae to feed the teeny tiny creatures.

These containers hold the little clams until they are about a month old.

There's the cute little one month olds... That's all clams, not sand.

Finally at about 4 months old, they are recognizable.

This is when the "clam seeds" are sold to the clams farmers, who put them in mesh bags and go out in the shallow waters to "plant" them.

This is a fully grown clam. This place plants and grows their own clams, but also buys clams back from the farmers they sold the seeds to.

Here they are cleaning the clams and separating out the empty shells.

Baskets of clams!

They had a machine that separated out the clams by size and bagged them in whatever quantities their customers wanted.  The different colors mean different sizes and quantities.

When we were bike riding today, we stopped at the little store below Steamers, the restaurant we went to yesterday, to get some ice cream, and sat and ate it outside.  We saw a guy unloading bags like these to take up into the restaurant.  So if you order clams around here, they have probably just been harvested the morning that you order and eat them!

Tonight we are smoking some of the fish that Bruce, Brad, and Ed caught on their fishing excursion.  We are doing trigger fish tonight.  Here it is in a brine, with brown sugar, cayenne pepper, onions, and garlic added.

And now it is patted dry, and a coating of brown sugar put on.

And they're cooking!

Mm-mm-mmmm!  Done!

Some of the musicians at the play along at Sunset Isle tonight.