A day off

Enjoying a nice fresh water bath with his friends. These guys also help to keep our Kitty's entertained .

Watching one of the usual visitors to our feeder enjoying a bath in my make shift bird bath.

Having a good time splashing the onlookers.

Went to visit the Lighthouse that's up the road from where we are parked and discovered that  even those who should know do make mistakes. The sign on the road looks great , but you get inside the Light Station and the corner stone has a different story.

Go figure. You would think some one would have looked inside to check the spelling. After all the stone had been inside above the entrance stair since they built the place.

The Park Service just finished the renovation of Bodie this year and you can finally climb to the top. It looks really good inside and out now.

The wrought iron stair case was completely removed and redone during the renovation and it's quite a climb as the stair case is very narrow so you have to go up in single file to the top. It  had to be difficult for the early  light keepers to carry the buckets of oil to the top to keep the light burning . I was tired after one trip and they had to do it a dozen times a day.



The view as always from the top of any Light Station is awesome, as  I looked out towards the Sound I could see the Island that we went to,to band the Pelicans a couple of weeks ago. It's the one in the distance.

The little white speck in the center of the picture is our RV. So you can see we are just over the sand dune from the ocean. the houses to the left are for the seasonal NPS staff. The other RV's are NPS volunteers.

A baby Loggerhead Turtle that we helped release into the ocean last night. The baby was found on the beach during the day and so it was held in a safe area until dark. That's done to give them a chance to get into the water with out the Gulls or crabs eating them.



It was just amazing to see the little one swimming with all it's energy trying to move into the surf. After a few minutes the little one disappeared into the ocean. We waited to make sure the waves didn't bring the baby back to shore.



All those little white spots are Ghost Crabs. There were hundreds of them on the beach last night. You don't see as many in the day light, but when the sun goes down it is a much different beach.  They are one of the main reasons the newly hatched Turtles have a high mortality rate. Also why when we do a night release we wait to see the baby Turtles are well into the surf before we leave.