sixty!

This handsome man on his sixtieth birthday yesterday, june 13, 2008!!

We celebrated by going to the coast, about 75 miles west of us.

We saw an island offshore just full of 2 kinds of sea lions and 2 kinds of seals: Harbor seal, Northern Elephant seal, Stellar Sea lion and the California sea lion. They were so loud! We were sitting on the bluff in front of the ocean when we saw a huge Harbor seal swimming in front of us. It dove down and came up with a huge something in it's mouth, a octopus! It had huge tentacles with big suctions cup looking things. The seal was ripping huge pieces of tentacle and wolfing it down. The rest of the octopus would sink and he would dive for it again, always find it and when above the water, rip, it looked tough, huge pieces and gobble them down. This went on for at least 20 minutes. The water was rushing in against a solid rock plateau, and he stayed right off the edge, in huge surf right behind the breakers.

That pile of brown on the sand in front of the large rock, are the seals and sea lions. The volunteers who were there said that they spend 11 months in the ocean and come here to rest. They were very playful and tossed each other around in the surf. Also, the 4 kinds of fin footed mammals all get along together and co-exist together in that mound and stay together in the sea.

Just down the road from the campground was the Simpson (read timber baron) estate, now owned by the state. The main house is gone but there are huge amazing gardens, sheltered from the ocean by a row of huge juniper trees.

We had the cake last night, but we are celebrating the birthday next week-end with a solstice party -

We wish all of you could come!