Thursday - Well, today is my big day -- my 70th birthday! Yikes, does that ever sound OLD. But Joe took good care of me today, and we celebrated in our own way. We started out with a nice breakfast in town, then drove back to our little beach by the campground (we think it is Caspar Beach) and picked up sea glass for about 1 1/2 hour. That is really hard on our backs, but it was fun, and we got a good amount.
We went back to the RV to clean up a little, then headed out again, this time to the real Sea Glass Beach. As we were driving out of the campground, we saw a guy at the fish cleaning station. He had on a wet suit, and we could see he had abalone, so we stopped and talked to him. He had 3 abalone, his limit. You can't scuba dive for them, you just have to free dive. He was cleaning the third one. We've seen the shells (decorated) at lots of places but this was the first time we had seen the actual "animal." Abalone are very large sea snails, in the molluscs family. He trims the meat, then deep fries it. Yuk.
This is the top shell. The inside is beautiful.
This green-handled "knife" is used to pry the abalone off the rocks they cling to.
Here is the finished product, once it is trimmed out.
Once we had this lesson, we headed on to the Sea Glass Beach. The reason there is so much sea glass here is because between 1906 and 1967, the people in Fort Bragg dumped their trash in the ocean here (which was a common practice for centuries). Although the coastal dumps (3 of them in Fort Bragg) were cleaned up, the ocean responded by washing up beautiful multicolored pieces of the wave-tumbled glass from those dumps.
There was a short trail down to this beach, and sure enough, there was lots of sea glass. It was several inches deep, but most of the pieces were really small, smaller than we had been finding back at Caspar Beach. And we had been told that we couldn't take any, so we waded through the glass, and we did pick up a few pieces. But it didn't look like the photo we had seen in a magazine.
We came upon this lady writing "happy birthday" with the white seaglass pebbles. I said, "that must be for me." It actually was for her son, Brandon, back in Canada. We walked on to another rock outcropping and picked up a few more pieces.
When we came back, I went over to check on her work. She had finished, and I said we should put "wilma" on it, so she changed Brandon to Wilma. And she thought we should add "70." We helped her husband supply her with the glass. Notice the little heart on the right in the reddish glass.
We had a good laugh with them. Then they took a picture of both of us. We found out they are camped at the same campground we are. I think I will print this photo and put it in a frame as a memento of my 70th birthday
We left here, Joe took me to lunch (Taco Bell, not too many choices here), then we drove down to the Fort Bragg Harbor.
Our next stop (my pick, since it is my birthday) was the Sea Glass Museum. We had been told this was a good museum and gift shop, they showed samples of some of the sea glass we were finding and described its origin (perfume bottles, dishes, etc.) And it was a nice museum. We have actually picked up some of the shards on display.
We have 3-4 pieces of this blue and white pottery. She told us these were rare finds.
And Joe found one like this next big piece, but I think it is a different color.
There were postcards, gift cards and puzzles showing a beach much more rich with the sea glass than the one we had been to. Joe asked about that. She told us there was another sea glass beach just down to the left of where we were, not very well marked, and that beach did look like the postcards. We were pretty tired but back to Sea Glass Beach we went. We found the trail, had to cross a cable at the viewpoint, and then practically slide down the trail, but we did find the right beach. Joe was really into this -- I was ready to quit before he was
The lady at the Museum told us that we could, in fact, pick up the sea glass. She said the locals try to discourage it, but it wasn't against the law. So we did. However, it was posted that it was illegal to collect it, so we don't know.
There was so much, several inches deep, all over this beach. We finally just sat down and started filling our gallon zip lock bags. We left with 2 bags full, but we didn't know if was illegal or not, so we tried to cover the bags with my sweatshirt. Climbing back up the trail was another challenge, we literally had to crawl up it. They obviously don't want people down there, even though they are proud to advertise it in the town literature.
Exhausted, we headed back to the campground. We were done with sea glass, but what a success! Joe decided we needed to organize all of our rocks since I had stuffed them in every cubbyhole, and we also had several sacks in the back of the car -- we have been to lots of beaches on this trip. He said our seaglass today probably weighed 25 lbs. So we ended up with 2 full gallon ziplock bags and one quart bag.
Once we reloaded all of rocks (and we have some big, pretty ones from various beaches), we showered, then went out for my birthday dinner (Mexican). We didn't have birthday cake, but we had peach pie waiting for us back at the RV.
I had seen this huge slab of redwood next to a museum in town, but Joe had never caught sight of it, so on the way to the restaurant, we stopped here. It was the largest redwood tree known to have grown in this (Mendocino) county.
It took a 22 foot saw blade (pictured below), and 60 man hours, to fell it.
I don't know about this being 70 business, but I know I sure am tired tonight. We had a very full day with the sea glass, which was really special since this is something I've always wanted to do. On our way home from the restaurant, there was a deer right beside the road, fortunately it did not jump in front of us. That could have been a very bad ending to our day.
I received several birthday phone calls and lots of FB birthday wishes, so thank you, everyone. It is very much appreciated, and nice to be remembered today. Several of my high school classmates sent me FB birthday wishes -- all of us are hitting the big 7 0 this year, so I guess I'm in good company.
Tomorrow we head inland. We were in the 60s today, I'm guessing today is the last day of that. We should be in Sacramento this weekend sometime.
Happy Birthday Wilma. Looks like you had a great day. The sea glass is wonderful looking.
ReplyDeleteLinda