Some Spring Photos From Camp

There is a solitary week of science camp yet to come this school year. Between now and then, I have a week off. It's true what they say about the years seeming to go by faster as one ages. The weeks go by in a blink

A few things of note have happened this year:

The road to camp is finally fixed now. It took over a year, during which we had to shuttle kids in vans from the parking lot of another camp down the hill. In the final months, when repairs were actually underway, we had to adjust our schedules to work around the road closure.

There is a retrofitting/repair project underway at Lake Ranch Reservoir. The reservoir was built in the 1870s, and is not up to current earthquake safety standards. Coincidentally enough, it sits right on top of the San Andreas Fault. The water company is putting in new pipes, but to do this, they've had to drain the water out. It's not completely dry, but the water level is as low as I've ever seen it. Because of this, there are vast expanses of mud. To date, five different kids have lost shoes (literally), and two kids got mired in the mud deeply enough that they had to be dug out by their friends.

We've been doing an official animal count on the Thursday long hikes, with a view toward creating our own database of local population trends.

Three staff members have seen a Mountain Lion in the last couple of weeks. I was not one of them.

The strangest animal sightings for me have been:

Seeing a Hoary Bat fall out of a tree and then, when Bat and Sasquatch tried to get it into a box for a trip to a wildlife rescue center, suddenly recover and fly back into the tree (pictured below). Other groups saw a Bobcat and a Bald Eagle on that day. I saw a bobcat a few weeks later. I still haven't seen a Bald Eagle around camp though.

Seeing a hapless Western Toad locked in amplexus with a rotting Bullfrog carcass(pictured below).

Having a solo sit during the night hike ended by a Great Horned Owl. I told the kids I'd hoot like an owl when it was time to end the solo sit and return to the circle. About a quarter of the group mistook the real owl hoot for mine.

Finding a Western Forest Scorpion in the middle of cannibalizing a smaller member of its species.


Below are some photos from the last few months of camp.