I have a confession. This was not my first dead whale sightseeing expedition. When I was in college I made someone in my dorm drive me down to the Mystic/Lyme area to see one. And so while my eyes totally lit up when I saw the post about the whale pop in my feed reader today, I was not completely committed to going to see it.
But Elisa called me at 4 today, saying, “So…are we going to see the dead whale or what?” I simultaneously thought, “YEAH!” and “Elisa is the best friend ever”. How many people do you know – Rhode Islanders, no less – who would drive all the way to Matunuk to see a whale corpse? So off we went – I picked her up at 6 with my RI Road Atlas and we hit the road. First we drove around in this development, innocently ignoring all the PRIVATE PROPERTY, ONE WAY, NO TURNAROUND, and DEAD END signs. But we couldn’t see the whale, or a place the whale might be, and we weren’t entirely sure we were on the right road.
We found a parking area near by for a beach and fishing area. I went out to scout along the beach and saw an area I recognized from the pic in the ProJo earlier… it was clearly a ways away, but definitely walkable. Given that this excursion had taken the place of our regularly scheduled walk, it was an added bonus to be able to get some exercise in. Elisa already posted about the walk there, and other sightseers, so I won’t be redundant, but I knew we were on the right track when (1) I could smell carcass and (2)I saw the clusters of people and the cop car. I took a slightly precarious climb down to see the whale carcass. Let’s just say it lost a lot of structural integrity between this morning and this evening – yuk. And it REEKED. So I looked at it a little, let Elisa take embarrassing photos, then climbed back up without losing one of my knock-off crocs.
Then we went out for ice cream at the Vanilla Bean, where – even though she totally humored me by going on this ferkakte excursion in the first place, bought me ice cream. With jimmies.
It’s not entirely clear what the fate of the whale will be, but hopefully they’ll stay away from dynamite.
Elisa, you are truly overly indulgent of my insano whims the best friend ever. Thanks.
The whale this morning....
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