I arrived Tuesday as everyone was eating lunch. My parents camp site was really nice. It was near the crest of the hill with a view of the ocean over the top of the neighbors, and it had nice shrubbery around the fire pit which provided complete privacy.
After lunch, we all headed to Newport because Patrick had to leave around dinnertime, and he wanted to see Lorna. We spent some time on the Newport waterfront as well before saying goodbye to Patrick and returning to camp for dinner where Lorna, Bob and Anna joined us.
In the picture below they are comparing ankles...or something!
Dinnertime!
Dad and Jim were telling stories and had us all in stitches (as usual.)
Of course, Dad still laughs at his own stories before he gets to the punch line...
Mom, Glennis and I took a few minutes to check out the beach. The tide was not out very far, but we did find some interesting things.
You could see the different "strata" of seaweed on the rocks. Many were bright green, while others were red or brown.
I love the look of gooseneck barnacles.
There were lots of limpets and snails on the rocks, and I found it particularly interesting that there were just a few bright red/orange shells scattered among groups of snails. I wonder what the advantage/disadvantage of this coloring is? Do predators think they are poisonous? Or do they usually get eaten first, which is why their white, brown, and black counterparts were more abundant?
The big find was the partially eaten octopus (the gulls were having a hay day!) We looked for the beak (I would have loved to keep it and use it in class), but it looked as if it had been partially removed by a scavenger. Too bad. It was a pretty good sized one too. The "head" was about the size of a large cantaloupe.
As always, nature created beautiful sculptural arrangements of stuff that was brought in by the tide.
The eroded hills were brightly colored, showing the different soil types in the strata.
Wednesday morning Glennis tried to heat up yesterday's dinner over the fire (tomales) and toasted me a bagel!
Later, Mom and I returned to the beach during a much lower tide to see what we could find. There were tons of tide pools, and we had fun making our way across them without stepping on critters or falling on the slick seaweed. There were starfish everywhere and we couldn't help taking tons of pictures.
When these fish would stop moving in a tide pool with broken shells, they would completely disappear. It was a good think we weren't predators, however, because this tide pool was shell-free.
Here are the many starfish pics (with a few anemones thrown in for good measure).
A pair of pigeon guillemots were nesting on a nearby rock and let us know when we got too close. This is the male. It was hard to hold the telephoto lens stable enough to get a good pic without a tripod.
