We had some time to explore the beach before our lecture. We had class on the beach. How cool is that? Jim talked to us a little bit about the different types of flora and fauna we will see on the duration of this trip: like sea palms and crabs. After that, we headed back to the vans and made our way to our hotel for the night.
Day 2, October 3, brought us to Old Monterey. We passed Pigeon Point Lighthouse on the way, which is one of the most commonly photographed lighthouses in the US. We also stopped at Moss Landing Harbor to see the sea lions! There were so many all just piled on the dock. There were also otters swimming around a little ways off. So so cute!! Moss Landing is an active fishing port, fishing offshore for rockfish, etc. From Moss Landing, we headed on to Old Monterey, also known as the Monterey State Historic Park. We were supposed to go to the Maritime Museum but we discovered it is closed until next year upon arrival, so we went to the Pacific House Museum instead. The Pacific House was constructed from adobe in 1847 and contained the history of the Indian people who lived in the area before it was taken over by the Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans (not all at the same time of course). We had a chance to explore the museum a bit before Glenn took us on a walking tour of Old Monterey. There was a whole section on otter hunting due to the value of the fur. There were also varying exhibits on cooking implements, tools, musical instruments and much more. From there, Glenn took us on a walking tour. Our first stop was the Casa del Oro. It was originally an adobe barracks for the Mexican troops, but it got turned into a store to sell to those participating in the gold rush. Our next stop was California's first theater!
It originally operated as a store, but the store closed when the owner went looking for gold during the gold rush. The American soldiers in town turned it into a theater to make money. Jack Swan built the stage and provided benches, whale-oil lamps, candles for footlights, and curtains made of blankets. From there we passed by the first brick house. Most buildings from this era were made from adobe. The bricks were actually locally made, but they didn't realize the sand needed to be washed to get all the salt water out of it, so the building has started to deteriorate. The next place was really cool: the whaling station which was the headquarters of the Old Monterey Whaling Company. The coolest part of this was the sidewalk right outside. Sounds boring, but the sidewalk was made out of whale vertebrae! Awesome, right? Our last stop was the Monterey Customs House, for which Cary gave us the low down. Turns out, the Customs House was actually built in three sections: the first by the Spanish, the second by the Mexicans, and the third by the Americans. It was right in front of the Customs House where the Americans declared California as part of the United States. And that basically concluded our walking tour of the Monterey State Historic Park. That was only the first half of the day. For the second half of the day, we got aboard the Pt. Sur Clipper for our whale watch. Once we headed out past the copious amount of sea lions in the harbor, we made our way into the Pacific Ocean. The first thing we saw were two orcas "playing" with a harbor seal before eating it. Apparently that is very rare to see. The guys running the whale watch had never seen one and they've been doing it for 15 or so years. After the orcasphalaropes (birds) in the distance. These birds eat the same thing as humpback whales. So where these birds are found, usually so are humpbacks. And boy did we find humpbacks. They were literally surrounding us, enough that we turned off the engine and just floated while they came up to inspect the boat, sound beneath it, and bounce sonar off of it. It was absolutely incredible.
October 4, Day 3, was a day spent in Monterey itself for the most part. We started off the day with a walking tour of Monterey. We stopped by the statue of Ed Ricketts, which was placed almost directly at the site of his death. We walked by the remnants of the old canneries, which shut down when the sardine population crashed. We also saw Ed Ricketts' house/lab as well as some of the other buildings fictionalized for Steinbeck's "Cannary Row." After that, we hit the aquarium. I am totally obsessed with the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It is spectacular!!! Unfortunately we only had two hours to explore, but we made the best of it! There was a sea horse exhibit, a coral reef exhibit, a jellyfish exhibit, a kelp forest exhibit, a deep coral reef exhibit, as well as a touch tank, a shore birds exhibit and a sea otter exhibit. The jellyfish were absolutely gorgeous!! I have never seen so many different types of jellyfish, or sea horses for that matter. Amazing. The coolest thing about this aquarium is that it's not your typical aquarium. All the exhibits are based on the local ecosystems and helping to protect and preserve them. It's fascinating. But I think the best thing about the aquarium was the sea otters. There were two in the tank, a baby and its surrogate mother. So cute!! For the second half of the day, we headed to Point Lobos. It was utterly stunning. We sat on a cliff overlooking the waves crashing on the rocks and had class. How many people can say they've had class on a cliff in California? Williams-Mystic students can!! Anyway, once class was over, we had a bit of time to explore. Sonja and I found trees to climb. That night was also a most epic occurrence. The program treated us to Ghiradelli's ice cream, which was unbelievably tasty, so some students decided to have an Earthquake Challenge contest. The Earthquake is 8 scoops of ice cream and 8 toppings of your choice. Each team had 4 people: 3 students and one faculty/staff. The time began and all hell broke loose. Team Banana dove right in and started eating with their hands. It was totally out of control and the most hysterical thing ever and a fantastic way to end the day.
Day 4, October 5, was an early, packed day. We made our way to San Francisco, but stopped in the Port of Oakland on our way there. We boarded the Crowley tugboat "Guard." Crowley Maritime is one of the BIG maritime corporations in the world and gives money to Williams-Mystic to help students (like me!) attend the program! The tug can move in so many different directions and it has two large fire hoses to assist in firefighting if need be.
Our next stop of the day was the Marin Headlands overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. What a view. Beyond gorgeous. While stopped at the Headlands, we had our lectures for the day in the shadow of the Golden Gate. How crazy is that? Pretty cool. Once all that was done, we headed over the bridge itself into San Francisco. We had the night free to explore the city. Steffi, Sonja and I found an out of the way Indian restaurant for dinner, which was really tasty. Naan, yummm. We explored around a little bit more and then took a cable car home :) Excellenttttt.
October 6, Day 5, began with a sail around San Francisco Bay on the historic vessel, Alma. The Alma is a scow schooner which essentially functioned as a flatbed truck. She ferried goods from ships to port. She would have been piled high with non-perishable food/products, like hay, grain, lumber, etc. Because of this, she is built very wide and flat and has a centerboard instead of a keel to allow her into the shallow areas in and around the delta. She was often piled so high that the sails would have to be reefed up to the first reef point instead of down to it. We were in the middle of learning about the history of the scow schooner when one of the mates spied a man overboard a little ways away. So we radioed the Coast Guard and turned on the motor to help him. The first thing he said when we asked if he wanted a life ring was "Do you have any Grey Poupon?" I wonder how long he'd be thinking of that response. In any case, the Coast Guard and the Alameda Fire Department took care of him. We found out that he'd fallen off his 32-foot boat, which later crashed into Pier 70 about 3 miles away. And it was barely noon! Once we got back to the dock after the excitement, we continued around San Francisco on a walking tour, led by our fearless history professor, Glenn Gordinier. We hit a lot of the highlights of downtown San Francisco, including Fishermen's Wharf, Pier 39, Battery Street, the Old Ship Saloon on Pacific Street, and the Transamerica Building. He had some interesting facts to share about the development of the city and how the gold rush affected shipping. He said that in some places, there were whole ships buried below the street that had been abandoned during the gold rush and then covered over as the city expanded. He also spent some time telling us about the Barbary Coast and the earthquake of 1906. Once we'd trekked all around downtown San Francisco, it was back to the vans to head north to Bodega Bay. The landscape up north is so very different than what we had seen so far. We made it to the Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory and immediately went down to the beach to explore the beach and the tide pools. Classic Williams-Mystic.
Day 6, October 7, began on a very windy, very curvy road along the edge of the cliffs ending at Fort Ross, which was a Russian fort. We got a chance to explore the fort and some of the artifacts that had been found. We made our way to the cliff for our lectures, but on the way up to said cliff, we passed by a camper van that had a map of the world (in French) with routes traced on many of the continents. We happened to run into the couple who owned the van and I spent a little bit of time talking to the man (in French!). I discovered that they are from a small island off the coast of southern France, they had been traveling around the world for the last 5 or so years, and this was their first time in the States. He also was complaining that Americans speak too fast so he and his wife had trouble understanding their English. I told him I can totally sympathize; I have that problem sometimes with native French speakers. It was pretty rad. Anyway, we had our lectures overlooking the Pacific. Glenn talked a bit about the redwood industry and the effects it had on the coast. It was pretty interesting to see a picture of the type of apparatus that would slide wood off the cliffs and onto waiting ships. Very elaborately constructed. Of course, the next thing to do after talking about the redwood trade was to visit an actual redwood forest, so that's exactly what we did. The Armstrong Redwood Forest has some of the oldest redwoods on the west coast. I have never seen trees that majestic in my entire life. This particular forest had an outdoor theatre amongst the trees (where we had our lecture of course), complete with stage and orchestra pit.
These pictures don't even begin to come close to depicting how huge these trees are. You can't even fit a whole tree into one picture. After hanging out in the theatre for a bit, we had a chance to explore some of the walking paths through the forest. The natural light while we were there was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. The light filters through these trees differently than anything I've ever seen. I decided to walk down one of the paths by myself. The silence that bounced between the trees is almost indescribable. It's almost as if the trees are sharing their wisdom. I know it sounds corny, but seriously, it sounds like the trees are talking to one another. Some of these trees are hundreds of years old. It's amazing to think what the forest looked like when they were just saplings. I wish we had had more time to just sit and listen. Alas, the name of the game was fit as much in as possible, so we headed on to our next destination: Shell Beach. We spent time at Shell Beach playing in the tide pools and discovering different creatures. We found everything from octopuses to nudibranchs.
We lucked out with an extremely low tide at Shell Beach, lower than any of the faculty had seen in previous years. It was a very exciting tide-pooling experience :)
October 8, Day 7, started off at Tomales Bay Oyster Company. Martin, the owner of the oyster company, talked to us about the history of oystering in Tomales Bay. Turns out, the Pacific oyster, which is the oyster farmed by Tomales Bay Oyster Company, is originally from off the coast of Japan and was brought over for its speed of growth and size. Martin was also telling us how sustainable his business was because any shells that are shucked are put back in the bay to provide places for the baby crabs to hide and oyster spat to grow on. We also had the chance to try raw oysters fresh out of the tanks. Slimy, yet satisfying. From there, we headed around to the other side of Tomales Bay to check out the Point Reyes Lighthouse. To get down to the actual lighthouse (I say down for a reason), we had to climb up to the top of the point and then walk down 308 steps to the lighthouse. There was actually a sign that said if you had heart problems or any other types of medical conditions, you may want to consider not going down, because you had to then climb back up those 308 stairs. While we were exploring the lighthouse, we spotted some gray whales feeding right off the coast. This has certainly been the semester of whales for us. From Point Reyes, we continued on to Drakes Beach, where we had a lecture on Sir Francis Drake himself and the history of the area. While we were there, Rich had us do a lit prompt sitting somewhere on the beach by ourselves. We had to describe the sound of the ocean, like Henry Bateson had. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. We had some time to play on the beach after finishing our prompts. I encountered Jim narrating for a flock of sanderlings. Jim was explaining that the sanderlings would run to the water's edge and feed quick, quick, quick and then outrun the next incoming wave; "run forest, run" as Jim puts it. After Drakes Beach, we headed back to the lab for the evening. We happened to be staying at the lab at the same time as some guys from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) who were doing research. So they gave us some of their time to explain what they were doing and how they had gotten into working for NOAA. They were technical divers looking at shipwrecks off the coast, which is wicked cool! It was very interesting to hear all the different paths they had taken to end up on that expedition.
October 9, Day 8, was our free day. A few of us lobbied to go back to the redwoods for our free day instead of doing one of the offered activities. We were successful! We got a chance to spend a good portion of the morning exploring the redwoods. Eventually, we found a fallen redwood tree to climb up on and sit for a while. So we sketched and wrote in our journals, just enjoying being in the forest. It was really quite impressive how many people didn't see us as they were walking by. The tree we were sitting on was above them, but it amazed me how many of them didn't look up. I spent a good portion of the time walking around the forest just looking up. We moseyed out of the forest to begin our drive back to the lab. Once we got back, we still had a little time to kill, so Steffi, Sonja and I decided to walk up to the Horseshoe Cove overlook.
It was so gorgeous looking down on the town of Bodega in the distance on one side and looking down on the marine lab and Horseshoe Cover on the other side. While we were up there, the fog started rolling in around us, enough so that we could no longer see Horseshoe Cove after a while. Eventually, we began our hike back down. Steffi and Sonja decided to continue on; I went to explore some of the projects around the lab. Thus began the saga of the sand dunes. After spending some time at the lab, I left around 3:30 or so to get back to the lab dorms with some extra time to pack and shower before the 4:30 curfew. I hadn't been through the sand dunes yet, so I decided to take the path through the dunes which was supposed to lead back to the dorms. I followed said path until I came to a fork. one direction went off to a 3 mile hike and the other direction went to a short walking path. I took my best guess and avoided the three mile hike. Shortly, I discovered that the walking path kind of ended, so instead of doing the intelligent thing and turning around, I proceeded to bushwhack off the path, through the dunes, down one dune and over the next. By this point, it was around 4:00 and I was lost in the sand dunes. The next dune I came over, I saw a road at the bottom. So I headed for the road, down the dune, through the dead reeds and plants to the bottom. What I didn't see was the ditch at the base of the dune because it was filled with reeds. So I plunged into the ditch and skidded flat on my face onto what I discovered was a gravel dirt road. I was not a happy camper. I also still had no clue where I was. I could see the town of Bodega in the distance, so if worse came to worse, I could head for that. After I got myself up and brushed myself off, I ignored my various cuts and wounds and tried to figure out where I was. There was a water tank next to me. I had stumbled across an access road. Great. So I decided the road had to come out somewhere, so I followed it through a residential area to another dirt road and then finally to the main road. I was halfway to town. So I tried calling a few people to have them let someone in charge know that there was a slight possibility that I wouldn't be back at 4:30. Unfortunately, no one was picking up their phone, none of the 6 people I called. So I began the trek back along the main road to the dorms. By the time I reached the dorms, bleeding and sore, it was 4:20. What was supposed to have been a fifteen minute walk from the lab to the dorms on the main road took me almost an hour. The dunes were gorgeous, until I fell. The rest of the day was spent making our way back to San Francisco to spend the night so we could fly out early the next morning. What. A. Trip.
October 4, Day 3, was a day spent in Monterey itself for the most part. We started off the day with a walking tour of Monterey. We stopped by the statue of Ed Ricketts, which was placed almost directly at the site of his death. We walked by the remnants of the old canneries, which shut down when the sardine population crashed. We also saw Ed Ricketts' house/lab as well as some of the other buildings fictionalized for Steinbeck's "Cannary Row." After that, we hit the aquarium. I am totally obsessed with the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It is spectacular!!! Unfortunately we only had two hours to explore, but we made the best of it! There was a sea horse exhibit, a coral reef exhibit, a jellyfish exhibit, a kelp forest exhibit, a deep coral reef exhibit, as well as a touch tank, a shore birds exhibit and a sea otter exhibit. The jellyfish were absolutely gorgeous!! I have never seen so many different types of jellyfish, or sea horses for that matter. Amazing. The coolest thing about this aquarium is that it's not your typical aquarium. All the exhibits are based on the local ecosystems and helping to protect and preserve them. It's fascinating. But I think the best thing about the aquarium was the sea otters. There were two in the tank, a baby and its surrogate mother. So cute!! For the second half of the day, we headed to Point Lobos. It was utterly stunning. We sat on a cliff overlooking the waves crashing on the rocks and had class. How many people can say they've had class on a cliff in California? Williams-Mystic students can!! Anyway, once class was over, we had a bit of time to explore. Sonja and I found trees to climb. That night was also a most epic occurrence. The program treated us to Ghiradelli's ice cream, which was unbelievably tasty, so some students decided to have an Earthquake Challenge contest. The Earthquake is 8 scoops of ice cream and 8 toppings of your choice. Each team had 4 people: 3 students and one faculty/staff. The time began and all hell broke loose. Team Banana dove right in and started eating with their hands. It was totally out of control and the most hysterical thing ever and a fantastic way to end the day.
Day 4, October 5, was an early, packed day. We made our way to San Francisco, but stopped in the Port of Oakland on our way there. We boarded the Crowley tugboat "Guard." Crowley Maritime is one of the BIG maritime corporations in the world and gives money to Williams-Mystic to help students (like me!) attend the program! The tug can move in so many different directions and it has two large fire hoses to assist in firefighting if need be.
October 6, Day 5, began with a sail around San Francisco Bay on the historic vessel, Alma. The Alma is a scow schooner which essentially functioned as a flatbed truck. She ferried goods from ships to port. She would have been piled high with non-perishable food/products, like hay, grain, lumber, etc. Because of this, she is built very wide and flat and has a centerboard instead of a keel to allow her into the shallow areas in and around the delta. She was often piled so high that the sails would have to be reefed up to the first reef point instead of down to it. We were in the middle of learning about the history of the scow schooner when one of the mates spied a man overboard a little ways away. So we radioed the Coast Guard and turned on the motor to help him. The first thing he said when we asked if he wanted a life ring was "Do you have any Grey Poupon?" I wonder how long he'd be thinking of that response. In any case, the Coast Guard and the Alameda Fire Department took care of him. We found out that he'd fallen off his 32-foot boat, which later crashed into Pier 70 about 3 miles away. And it was barely noon! Once we got back to the dock after the excitement, we continued around San Francisco on a walking tour, led by our fearless history professor, Glenn Gordinier. We hit a lot of the highlights of downtown San Francisco, including Fishermen's Wharf, Pier 39, Battery Street, the Old Ship Saloon on Pacific Street, and the Transamerica Building. He had some interesting facts to share about the development of the city and how the gold rush affected shipping. He said that in some places, there were whole ships buried below the street that had been abandoned during the gold rush and then covered over as the city expanded. He also spent some time telling us about the Barbary Coast and the earthquake of 1906. Once we'd trekked all around downtown San Francisco, it was back to the vans to head north to Bodega Bay. The landscape up north is so very different than what we had seen so far. We made it to the Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory and immediately went down to the beach to explore the beach and the tide pools. Classic Williams-Mystic.
Day 6, October 7, began on a very windy, very curvy road along the edge of the cliffs ending at Fort Ross, which was a Russian fort. We got a chance to explore the fort and some of the artifacts that had been found. We made our way to the cliff for our lectures, but on the way up to said cliff, we passed by a camper van that had a map of the world (in French) with routes traced on many of the continents. We happened to run into the couple who owned the van and I spent a little bit of time talking to the man (in French!). I discovered that they are from a small island off the coast of southern France, they had been traveling around the world for the last 5 or so years, and this was their first time in the States. He also was complaining that Americans speak too fast so he and his wife had trouble understanding their English. I told him I can totally sympathize; I have that problem sometimes with native French speakers. It was pretty rad. Anyway, we had our lectures overlooking the Pacific. Glenn talked a bit about the redwood industry and the effects it had on the coast. It was pretty interesting to see a picture of the type of apparatus that would slide wood off the cliffs and onto waiting ships. Very elaborately constructed. Of course, the next thing to do after talking about the redwood trade was to visit an actual redwood forest, so that's exactly what we did. The Armstrong Redwood Forest has some of the oldest redwoods on the west coast. I have never seen trees that majestic in my entire life. This particular forest had an outdoor theatre amongst the trees (where we had our lecture of course), complete with stage and orchestra pit.
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| The illustrious sea clown - a type of sea slug. They are very cute when on your hand. |
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| We found a Sunstar that Jim decided to wear on his head. It was slimy. |
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| And of course, Glenn caught a fish. |
October 8, Day 7, started off at Tomales Bay Oyster Company. Martin, the owner of the oyster company, talked to us about the history of oystering in Tomales Bay. Turns out, the Pacific oyster, which is the oyster farmed by Tomales Bay Oyster Company, is originally from off the coast of Japan and was brought over for its speed of growth and size. Martin was also telling us how sustainable his business was because any shells that are shucked are put back in the bay to provide places for the baby crabs to hide and oyster spat to grow on. We also had the chance to try raw oysters fresh out of the tanks. Slimy, yet satisfying. From there, we headed around to the other side of Tomales Bay to check out the Point Reyes Lighthouse. To get down to the actual lighthouse (I say down for a reason), we had to climb up to the top of the point and then walk down 308 steps to the lighthouse. There was actually a sign that said if you had heart problems or any other types of medical conditions, you may want to consider not going down, because you had to then climb back up those 308 stairs. While we were exploring the lighthouse, we spotted some gray whales feeding right off the coast. This has certainly been the semester of whales for us. From Point Reyes, we continued on to Drakes Beach, where we had a lecture on Sir Francis Drake himself and the history of the area. While we were there, Rich had us do a lit prompt sitting somewhere on the beach by ourselves. We had to describe the sound of the ocean, like Henry Bateson had. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. We had some time to play on the beach after finishing our prompts. I encountered Jim narrating for a flock of sanderlings. Jim was explaining that the sanderlings would run to the water's edge and feed quick, quick, quick and then outrun the next incoming wave; "run forest, run" as Jim puts it. After Drakes Beach, we headed back to the lab for the evening. We happened to be staying at the lab at the same time as some guys from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) who were doing research. So they gave us some of their time to explain what they were doing and how they had gotten into working for NOAA. They were technical divers looking at shipwrecks off the coast, which is wicked cool! It was very interesting to hear all the different paths they had taken to end up on that expedition.
October 9, Day 8, was our free day. A few of us lobbied to go back to the redwoods for our free day instead of doing one of the offered activities. We were successful! We got a chance to spend a good portion of the morning exploring the redwoods. Eventually, we found a fallen redwood tree to climb up on and sit for a while. So we sketched and wrote in our journals, just enjoying being in the forest. It was really quite impressive how many people didn't see us as they were walking by. The tree we were sitting on was above them, but it amazed me how many of them didn't look up. I spent a good portion of the time walking around the forest just looking up. We moseyed out of the forest to begin our drive back to the lab. Once we got back, we still had a little time to kill, so Steffi, Sonja and I decided to walk up to the Horseshoe Cove overlook.
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