Santa Cruz~p.2

Island Fox up close funny story: One of our guys slept on the picnic table (many slept outside). The foxes are very well adapted to the campers and look all night for food. Therefore they always check out the tables. This guy woke up to find a fox on his chest looking at him. He screamed "get off me, get away get away from me", like a girl, sheer terror! Just look at the ferocious animal in the pic above and you will understand why he was so scared.
A path.

A post.

Flower- this was in an arid area with nothing but dry rock and dirt around

Tree

Justin

This was a pic I took inside a rock. I almost fell off the mountain slope we were on getting this because is was very steep. Probably would have only slid down on the sharp rocks 4 or 500 feet though so not too dangerous albeit it would have been painful.

We were watching those clouds on the left get blown in and then burned off by the sun at the same time.

This is a pig that was domesticated at one time probably back in the late 1800's. They returned to a feral state. They were susposibly brought to the island to erraticate the mice and rats, but then took over. Somehow golden eagles and bald eagles have something to do with this too. So I think the pigs took out too much of the bald eagles food and then the golden eagles became overbearing since bald eagles harass golden's until they leave. The reason the golden population boom is bad is that they eat foxes. We actually heard one being eaten. SOOO now they have killed all the pigs (Magnum PI did it- no joke Tom Seleck went out there on hunts). Now that all the pigs are gone they introduced more bald eagles to get things back to normal again. The foxes are back on the rise I am happy to say. I only saw ravens, seagulls and golden eagles though. Magnum PI was not on the island as far as I know.

This is lunch. Justin is a Staff Sergeant so he brought some MRE's he has around the house. Mre's are Ninja-neat because they have chemical packs in them that heat up when water is added. The reason this is Ninja-neat is because you can put them in water bottles and the heat and expanding gases blow it up. If you think that men ever grow up stop thinking that. Men don’t grow up and its a blessing too because if they did then hospitals would go out of business and God would not be able to look down upon us and shake His head like: "here we go again", but inside I know He is giggling.

So I was sitting in my chair being good (we are a church group) and talking to George when in my peripheral vision I catch sight of a dozen guys standing in a semi-circles with their arms crossed and poking each other all looking in my direction (this is not a good sign). So I jump up then George jumps up and says "what’s going on?" They all just snicker and point to the leg of a table under some guys being good and playing cards. Under this table leg is a watermelon sized plastic bubble that used to be a Gatorade bottle. Now, the "POP" that comes out of a water bottle is one thing. The gigantic BOOOM!!!! that is generated by a thick Gatorade bottle is something entirely different!

The guys playing cards are no fools, they see a crowd of about 20 guys standing there staring at them with their arms crossed trying to act cool. They jump up and yell at the poor guy who is trying to sleep 10 yards away from the expanding bottle. He covered his ears at the last second.

Now luckily the rangers had been drinking that night or we would have been kicked off the island! The boom was epic rivaled only by 4th of July fireworks or during parades when they fire those little cannons. We mused that someone might have blown up their air mattress a little too much and produced a similar sound but figured that we had to be honest and all.

This is all you are going to see of me becuase I took the pics.

This is a cloud full on, and that is an island in the distance.

east

bush

our boat- its cool here becuase we all had to pitch in to load and unload the boat, so we all stood in lines and firebrigaded the whole islands gear.

I almost forgot, we saw 4 blue whales on the way out! Camera was packed, these pics are on the way back. That was really super neat they did the tail thing you see on TV every time they dove down.