The riv­er from the pilot­house of the ferry. 

Sur­vey­ing the fort. 

Set­ting up our overnight tent city. 

Scav­enger hunt in the fort’s exterior. 

Ghost stories! 

At the end of the evening there was a work­shop on ani­mal night vision. After draw­ing in the dark, every­one turned their flash­lights to the table to see what they had created. 

Delaware City and its near­by refiner­ies as seen from the Heron tow­er at dusk. 

Walk­ing over to the riv­er to catch the dawn. 

The sun ris­es over the bay. 

A tug­boat push­es a barge down­riv­er at Sunrise. 

Mist over the moat. 

Fort silouette. 

Mir­ror of the water. 

Campers tak­ing down their tents. 

A stair­well going up from the sal­ly­port in the front entrance of the fort. 

A look across the “new­er” part of the island cre­at­ed by dredged riv­er bottom. 

Wait­ing for the boat home. 

Ear­li­er this month we took a fam­i­ly trip to the “Three Forts” along the low­er Delaware — Fort DuPont on the Delaware side, Fort Mott in New Jer­sey, and Fort Delaware right in the mid­dle (okay, it’s offi­cial­ly Delaware, mean­ing our hosts were the excel­lent staff of the Delaware Park Ser­vice). This week­end I went back with the two old­er boys on an overnight campout.

The island is only acces­si­ble by fer­ry. Most nights, the entire staff dis­em­bark back to Delaware on the last fer­ry (we joined them last time) but for the first time in any­one’s mem­o­ry, they had this cam­pout. If our fam­i­ly did­n’t scare them they might make it a more reg­u­lar event.

We camped out in the old march­ing ground right inside the fort and got to walk around all of the safe parts of the fort. In addi­tion, the staff had lots of great programs:

• Scav­enger hunt
• Para­nor­mal ghost tour includ­ing the normally-closed Endi­cott Tunnel
• Camp­fire with s’mores
• I did the nature trail on north side of island in near pitch black
• A night vision work­shop about how noc­tur­nal ani­mals see in the dark (rods and cones in the eye).
• The camp­ing of course
• In the morn­ing there was a guid­ed nature walk where we learned about birds and mam­mals on island.

And because I like shoot­ing time lapse videos late­ly, here are two. In the first the sun ris­es over the riv­er. In the sec­ond we ride the tram from Fort Delaware to the fer­ry dock. If you’re inter­est­ed in low-res videos of bridge cross­ings, spooky night wan­der­ings, or ghost sight­ings then fol­low the links. There’s also a more com­plete Flickr set of the trip.