Day 28: Sunday, February 9, 2014

Today I nearly got attacked by sea lions.

Well not really at all, but it's probably the closest I'll ever get to having a cool animal attack encounter where I lived to tell the tale. A little ways off of the shore of our campus is a huge rock that forms something like a mini island; we call it "Bird Rock". In celebration of the beautiful weather, I decided to kayak out there with Bernie and go look for Sea Lions since you can always hear them calling from the rock.

The waves were pretty rough so we had a bit of a shoulder workout getting out there, but here's a panoramic of our kayak as we approach Bird rock. The photo makes it seem a bit smaller than it actually is.

Before we even got close to the island, the tell-tale stench of animal manure told us that we were on the right track. Sure enough, we as we approached the island, we saw huge groups of seals piled on the shore of Bird Rock. There must have been at least a hundred, and one of them was absolutely massive. I don't know if sea lion colonies have something similar to a Queen Bee, but he definitely looked the part

We started pulling the kayak in closer, and all of a sudden, King Sea Lion gives a huge sort of half yawn half bark and plunges into the sea towards us. Before you know it, twenty-some other seals have followed suit and are swimming straight for us. At this point, our kayak was only about 10-15 feet away from shore, and it was probably the most terrifying and most amazing experience all at the same time. Bernie was half convinced they were going to capsize us, but I think they just wanted to defend their territory. A few curious sea lions even followed behind us for a little bit.

Our kayak headed straight into a group of sea lions up ahead

This episode of sea lions jumping in the water toward us was repeated several times as we made our way around Bird Rock, and we made many hasty kayak getaways. 

Some other cool photos that I snapped of the sea lions on Bird Rock: 

The lighting at this angle of Bird Rock made for a pretty good silhouette shot

By the time we had circled to the opposite side of the island, the surge was really strong,  and we put in some serious shoulder work keeping the kayak from drifting too close to the sea lions. When we finally got our fill of photos, we continued on to Blue Caverns.

Blue Caverns is basically a tunnel like structure through a rock cliff that's wide enough to kayak through. The photos and video I'm about to post do it absolutely no justice; it's beautiful.

Entrance to the cavern

We took a video of our entire trip to through cavern. I was attempting to help paddle while taking the video, so apologies for the shaky quality. The sound cuts out for a little bit towards the end before cutting back in, so you may want to turn your volume up a little during that section (basically, the part that you miss includes us running into shallow tide, so I temporarily cut out of the video to help Bernie paddle out).

Our view exiting the cavern

Roundtrip, our entire kayak excursion took a little less than two hours. Bernie and I had stupidly decided that lifting weights was a good idea before we kayaked, so our shoulders were pretty much shot by the time we paddled back into the Wrigley harbor...which just made the experience that much better.

Thoroughly soaked by the ocean spray; a selfie to document our successful return

To top off a fantastic day, Trevor finally taught me how to tie a proper knot, and Savannah and I successfully hung our hammocks up today! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me to document the momentous event, but I'm sure there'll be plenty of hammock photo ops in the future. 

Class starts again tomorrow, even though I'd gladly take a few more days off. Still, a great end to a great long weekend.