There are over 1200 images on the camera.

And I can't get them off. Most of them from Thursday and Friday's 600-some miles of driving. Whenever the order from Amazon comes in, then maybe I'll have something to show.

So for now, I'll talk about something else. Something that has come up twice in conversations in the past day or so.

And I guess I'm the only environmentalist to see it.

I'm opposed to the moratorium on offshore drilling.

First off, the judge got it right. The companies have legal rights to develop their leases that they have leased from the government. You don't get to come in afterwards and rewrite the contract.

But that's just legal wrangling, and who really cares except the lawyers.

No, I oppose the "stop drilling" order for two reasons:

Number one, you don't ground all the planes because you've had a plane crash. Yes, if your planes are showing cracks, you ground all of that model until they're all inspected, and then you fly again. But unless you have knowledge that there is a pervasive danger out there from every drill rig taking shortcuts, you don't punish them all for what one did.

You do, however, jump up inspections of all the remaining rigs and companies. Should have been doing that to begin with. And if you have companies drilling with emergency response plans that mention walrus in the Gulf of Mexico, or whose primary respondent has been dead for four years, yeah, you shut those down.

But that should be permanent, not a six month pause.

But reason Number Two is the big one.

Yes, there is a chance you could have another blowout. There is always that risk. The thought process going on here is... "Resources are already stretched thin, we need to wait until some of them are idle again."

Ummmm, no.

If you're ever going to have another cataclysmic release of oil into the Gulf of Mexico...

Now's the time.

Seriously. You've already got all the cleanup crews out there that you could get. Oil is oil, it's not like their booms are going to ignore oil from another spill, just because it doesn't say "BP".

And the coastline is already ruined in some places, and going to be in others before this is through. If one assumes another accidental release is possible, do you want to wait 5-8 years until everything is all healed, or maybe 80% healed, and then smack it with oil again?

No.

The smart thing to do is drill now, while things are messed up already, and drill as many of those damn wells as you can.

What's to lose that isn't already about to be lost?