Oh 5:am sure felt early! The road was really busy with clam diggers, the parking lot at the edge of the mud flat was packed with oyster farm workers, and we were a bit late for our first tide of the trip. It was a beautiful morning.
Margot's field work involves spreading out a rope grid on a predetermined spot (located partly through awesome memory and partly through the use of a GPS and partly through the location of PVC posts previously pushed into the ground but not always still remaining). At each cross point of the grid, a quadrat is placed, and percentage cover of eelgrass, macroalgae, and animals/debris is counted. The number of eelgrass shoots are counted, and a measurement of the redox potential is then taken before moving onto the next quadrat. Margot did all of the initial measurements this first day, and I sat on my butt and froze while recording all of the numbers she was shouting out.
The first site we were doing was right on an area recently dredged and in the process of being worked as an oyster farm. All morning we had background noise of birds and Spanish-speaking oyster workers.
We barely managed to get three grids done when the tide breached the nearest channel and began to creep towards us. We slogged out of there (fording a channel and making me VERY glad to be wearing such sweet sweet neoprene chestwaders).
It was a beautiful day and only 10am ish when we finished (the benefit to getting up so early!). After a stop to pick up some clams in Ilwaco, we had coffee at Bailey's (and an amazing scone) and headed to the south end of the peninsula to check out Cape Disappointment.
I have no idea why Lewis and Clark named it Cape Disappointment - it's a gorgeous spot with specacular beaches on either side of the Cape (one is actually named Waikiki Beach). We wandered around the park a bit, and did a short hike up to the lighthouse.
It's a bit hot hiking in long johns and rain gear. We had to modify our apparel on the way down, which lead for some interesting looks from people driving by us as we walked down the road. I think that the two German businessmen whom we accosted to take our pictures at the lighthouse were a bit amused by our outfits, but they LOVED it when we decided that we were going to act out Lewis and Clark's famous Discovery Pose.
Lewis and Clark kept interesting journals and as part of a larger art project along the Columbia, an artist has created a walking path incorporating some of their observations during their travels, such as "bought a dog" and "do" "do" "do".
On our way back to Ocean Park, we ran into a roadblock which forced us to park the truck and watch the Loyalty Day Parade in Long Beach. At first we couldn't figure out why Loyalists would be celebrating in the USA, but upon closer inspection (and an article in the Oregonian), we deciphered that it is Loyalty to the USA day.
We also did the best we could in the spirit of the USA and pigged out on soup and donuts. Uggghhhhhhhhhh.
Lastly, before we could go to bed, we had to process some eelgrass in the kitchen of the studio suite at the Resort. Each day we collected 50 random shoots and measured their overall length, the length of the sheath, and width. Margot will dry these and record their dry weight to determine biomass.
That night we were still incredibly stuffed from our gorge fest for Loyalty Day . We decided on a small meal of wine and rosemary steamed clams with salad and baguette. LUXURY!
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