tide pooling, whaling & birding

Yesterday 5 of us went out to one of the ends of the road around here to Narrow Cape (took about an hour). We ate lunch on the cliffs and watched the Gray whales go by, on their way north to their arctic summer feeding grounds. My first whale sightings! I saw some flukes and got some through a scope, which was cool. We also took a look down on Fossil Beach for some treasures. I had fun breaking open concretions to see what was inside. On our way back, we had to stop for Bison to cross the road. There is a guy out there that farms with Bison because they stand up to the bears more than cattle do. I also had some Buffalo jerky, not as good as moose but it was alright.

We saw lots of birds- Emperor Geese, Black Brants, some Oystercatchers are fairly normal and easy to see around here, but there are only 15,000 in the world and they have really cool red beaks and circles around their eyes. We stopped many times along the road to check the slopes for mountain goats and bears, and found 3 goats in a ravine and one on top of a ridge. Didn't see any bears, but found bear tracks down a mountain leading to a deer carcass, or I should say where a deer carcass used to be because only fur was left.

I went down to Abercrombie Park to find some tide pools this morning. Lowest tide of the month- we saw some sweet sea stars, sunflower stars, anemones, sea cucumbers, sea urchins and varied shelled critters. It was neat to turn rocks over and see a little community of these guys.