It's actually a lucky thing that we didn't visit the estuary on Monday (our beach day) because the interpretive center is open only Tuesday-Friday each week! Maybe it wasn't luck...anyway we enjoyed roaming around the center for a little while, then we went out for a self-guided hike.
Here's a photo of the crew just before we headed into the primeval forest and down to the estuary (L-R: Courtney, Rachel M, Shannon, Arianne, jennifer, Devon [back], Eileen, Joseph and Rachel S [kneeling], Luke, Danielle, Isaac, Jessica, Kelly, and Skyler).
You can't tell from the photo, but mist was coming down consistently, but still, look at those smiles!
We walked about 1/2 mile down to the overlook to the estuary. It was actually nice that the mist was coming down. We saw things we probably would not have seen on a dry day. We saw salamanders, rough skinned newts, actually. Devon spotted a snake and was off after it, but no luck.
We also saw birds, and raccoon at two separate locations as they came down onto the mudflats to forage for small invertebrates.
The hike was interesting. At one point the name of route was "Tunnel Trail". Here's why:
One of the main reasons we went in addition to seeing the estuary was to take a look at some of the restoration ecology that is being done there as the biologists there try to help the region recover to a more natural condition after nearly 100 years of dredging of the main channel as well as the building of levees and dikes as well as draining tidal wetlands for agriculture. The restoration efforts started in the 1970s and are ongoing.
Here's a shot of an old levee and you can see where it has been breached to allow tidal water to reenter tidal flats where it went before the dikes were built.
All in all it was another great outing. Stay tuned for more updates.
No comments:
Post a Comment