Best Wildlife Day. Ever.

Gray whales. Elk. Elephant Seals. Oysters. Birds. Deer. This is the list of amazing wildlife we spotted on our outing to Pt. Reyes Shoreline with Heather today. The day was beautiful with sunshine and blue skies and the ocean full of white waves. After a picnic lunch, we began our hiking at the lighthouse...

All smiles on the 303 steps to and from the lighthouse. Ella helped get us up them by sounding an alert for every group of ten we'd just conquered.

Playing on the whale bones-- vertebrae and ribs (HUGE, right?)

Dave is using the binoculars to try and spot some migrating gray whales. He was successful! He found and showed us 1 whale breaching and then a group of 3 blowing spray and poking their heads up.

When we told the ranger what we saw, he asked us to change the "Whales Sighted Today" number on the board.

After the lighthouse we took a short hike to Chimney Rock where we could view a natural elephant seal habit.

The ranger told us he counted 100 seals, 90 of them were pups. They were so noisy! Dave said, "If you didn't know what you were walking up to, you'd think a herd of angry pigs was being attacked by monkeys!"

Next up was two quick stops, the first at the Drake Bay Oyster Company. Heather and I are not seafood lovers. We were interested in seeing the workers harvest the oysters, but couldn't stomach going in the store. These mounds of shells will go back into the ocean. The second stop was to walk the beach and capture the photo used in our new blog header. Like it?

The last thing we did was drive through an Elk Preserve on the peninsula. It was afternoon, so the fog was starting to roll in. That made the finding and photographing of these magnificent animals a little tricky. We still found a herd, some wrestling with their antlers and then later this 14 point buck.