VAST LIFE DIARIES - WEST COAST TRIP | DAY 4 ALBION RIVER
It doesn’t get better than waking in your tent to the smell on bacon and eggs. I guess waking up in your tent to the smell of bacon and eggs and surround by the serene beauty at Schooner’s Landing brings that a bit closer to perfection.
The Ocean Safari crew had breakfast waiting. We ate around the morning campfire enjoying the wilderness and great company. Wula, our videographer was up much earlier and shared with the group all that he captured through the lens. He saw hawks and other birds, a den of deer walking along the river bank, seals and their pups looking at the camera with curiosity, fish in the river and crabs on the marsh, and much much more. The river is so full of life, and it seemed to channel life into our bodies. It was a perfect morning.
After breakfast Haruka Ito, Ocean Safari’s marine biologist and naturist, led us on a quick expedition through a nearby tide pool. We always see so many things when we go surfing, wondering what they are and why they are there. Haruka shared her knowledge with us and showed us so many things we didn’t know about. Most interesting was all the fun fact about kelp! Who knew they pull and absorb radiation, is used to thicken ice cream, has more potassium than banana, is a good source of iodine, and contain many other essential elements that our body need. Learning about kelp is actually one of the reasons we came to Albion River, but more on that later.
After the tide pool we visited Glass Beach, just past Fort Bragg. The entire area was actually garbage dump until the 1950’s. Over the decades, the trash in the landfill compacted, melted, and rusted together. As the trash and shoreline eroded into the ocean, the many glass bottles in the dump turned into sea glass, lining the beaches on the shoreline with a glistening shine. I’ve never seen this much beach glass collected together, beautiful yet heart-aching knowing this was only possible by earlier generations dump tons of trash by the ocean.
On our way back to camp, we stopped for coffee and saw a local surf shop, Lost Surf Shack in Fort Bragg. The owner was kind enough to point us to a few possible spots so we decided to spend the afternoon and try to find some waves. We ended up at Big River, just a few miles north of Schooner’s Landing. The waves were not the most ideal but we saw that it has potential. Water temps were in the low to mid fifties, but our new 7 Till 8 4/3 wetsuits combatted the cold waters perfectly. Sitting in the line-up, we can’t help to keep looking back to shore at the beautiful beach and bluffs. We stayed until it was almost too dark to see.
Today was definitely packed full of activities. After a delicious campfire barbecue, we all called it an early night.
