I reached Ventura and met Lisa at her house. We went shopping to find food for the week and packed up.Tuesday morning we headed out to the dock to board the boat to Santa Rosa.
It was about a 3 hour ride out to the 3rd island in the Channel Island chain. On the boat I met Anna, a botanist and Betsy who is working with the St Louis Zoo collecting information about the captive breeding of the island foxes. When we arrived the departing staff left the vehicles on the dock, a truck with a crane moved the baggage from the boat to a truck and we drove up to the park service housing. There is a small suburb on the side of a hill where the park staff stay. It was really quite nice. Lisa showed me to the room of a vacationing co-worker; it had a queen sized bed and a bathroom attached. Then we took a ride down to the dirt landing strip where the plane was coming in. Trish got off the plane, she had finsished some fox research on San Miguel island and decided to stay on a week to check things out on Santa rosa.
Over the next week I got to see most of the different areas on the Island. Lisa was busy locating the island foxes using radio tellemetry, so she couldn't go hiking with me, but when she had to drive to the far flung corners of the island she could drop me off (and Trish and Betsy who were less busy) and we would only have to hike back, making it possible to see things that we wouldn't have been able to get around to otherways.
The grove of Torrey Pines that grow on the island is one of only 3 in the world. They don't grow very tall but some of the gnarled trunks are pretty thick. The dry air blowing over the pines is very fragrant.
Down at the beaches on the south side of the Island there are wonderful sandy beaches that are occupied and odorized by dozens of elephant seals. The elephant seals are very lazy and indifferent to people walking by. We also saw some harbor seals laying on the rocks off shore, but they are much more wary of humans and floundered into the water when we came around the corner.At a place called China Camp there is an Chumash graveyard and mizzen. As the beach erodes away bones and other objects are uncovered. there were many bones that were not human, and the Chumash affinity for red abolone was apparent by all of the pearly shell fragments. I found some ribs and a couple of Skulls that were exposed. The crania were intact but the jaws and facial structure below the eyes had eroded away.
Lobo Canyon is the most spectacular of the many canyons that radiate from the center of the island. It is not grand in scale but the sandstone has erroded in some unique shelf like formations.
I made along day hike out to Carrington point on the north west of the island. the rocky cliffs along the shore here make for good seabird nesting. There are several natural arches that have formed along the surf line.
There was plenty of variety to keep me busy on the island and I think I went at the right time of the year. Lisa said that the weather had just turned nice, in the winter it tends to be foggy and cold; and there were a myriad of tiny wild flowers blooming all over the island.
Tuesday rolled around again and the boat came and those of us on the island left while the other shift came on.
Pictures: 1) Betsy and Trish hiking in Lobo Canyon. 2) A natural bridge over a small inlet near Carrington Point, and me running to beat the auto timer. 3) Standing on the beach with the elephant seals. The large males with their namesake snouts had left the beach earlier in the year, these are the molting juveniles who are sticking around. 4) Dirk and Anna making a botanical transect. They measure off a line 30 m long and identify the plants at 30 cm intervals; giving 100 points of data that can be compared to the species present along the same line from year to year. Now that the ranch has stopped raising cattle the plant diversity is slowly reverting to its prior state. Many plants need two or more good years in a row to establish themselves and get their roots deep enough to survive a drought year. The right combination of good years might not come around more than once in 10 0r 20 years it will be along time before the island returns to its previous state.
