Last Thursday afternoon the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Coastal Discovery Center in San Simeon, CA hosted a class of the OLLI (Osher Life Long Learning Institute) at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. Below is the course description from their catalog:

Discovering San Simeon Bay

The Coastal Discovery Center, located in William Randolph Hearst Memorial Beach, is an environmental and cultural history education center with a focus on the interaction of land and sea. Opened in July 2006, the Center includes, among other exhibits, videos of local undersea exploration, living steelhead trout, and an interactive display covering 300 years of history at San Simeon Bay.

The course will start with a brief introduction to the Center and its exhibits. Following this, there will be a guided walking tour of the W. H. Hearst Memorial Beach focusing on its diverse history as a whaling center, a fishing port and a shipping port. 

In a second segment, participants will collect and examine marine plankton, the invisible life in the sea, and learn to identify them using a video microscope.

I was one of the "volunteer" professors lecturing that afternoon, along with Leslie McGarry. We have done the History of San Simeon Bay program at the CDC for several groups and on a monthly regularly scheduled basis for several years now.

I thought I'd share some photos one of the "students" sent us:

OH, DEAR ME, PART 2!

You met this young buck on my 4/2/2010 Post about photographing him out our kitchen window after doing the dinner dishes.

We met him again yesterday morning; this time just down the block.  This time he decided to bring some friends to check out the neighborhood.

I counted 18 deer but they wouldn't cooperate by gathering more tightly together for a group shot.  It didn't help that I lacked a wide angle lens.

They did thoroughly inspect things in the "'hood."  I think that they were particularly interest in the landscape and gardens of our homes.

I just couldn't resist trying to create something a bit more artsy.

Our dogs are not the only ones who suffer from the abundant tick population here in Cambria.

In the end, though, in always comes down to what there is to eat!

Romper Room of the Pacific

I was giving a lighthouse tour at Piedras Blancas last week when we came across a bunch of elephant seal wieners romping in the cove on the south shore of the peninsula.  These little cuties (well, not so little at 125+ lbs.) have a merry time learning how to swim and hunt before they take the big step of following their parents to the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean. These guys were born in December and January and bulk up on their mother very rich milk for a month or so.  The mother abruptly leaves her baby to fend for itself and heads to the northern Pacific to finally feed after months on the beach. The wieners gradually learn the skills for survival by playing and trying things out in the relative safety of coves and the protection of rocks close to the beach where they were born.  Very soon now, they will begin their real life as an northern elephant seal out at sea.

OH, DEAR ME!

It's not an uncommon experience to see various kinds of wildlife wondering around the streets of Cambria.  There is an abundance of wildlife here.  The populace and the wild animals live in peace in our little hamlet by the sea.  So it was not unusual for me to have seen this handsome young buck.  What was unusual is that I had my camera handy and that it had a fully charged battery!

I was just finishing doing the dinner dishes one evening when I noticed the young buck just outside the window over our kitchen sink.  It was a great way to end the day.  Life is good!