Greetings! I am back in Bamfield after my 5 day stay at the Carmanah Lighthouse aka the Carmanah Hilton. It was far from roughing it. Some groups of people from our class were camping for 5 days and eating hotdogs and oatmeal. We got to stay in this house with leather couches, all the food we wanted, and some amazing lighthouse keepers to spoil us. Jerry and Janet had us over for homemade pizza and a lot of desserts one night and then the next night brought us leftovers and the next night we played Settlers of Catan and had more dessert. We also got the key to the lighthouse to go up any time we wanted. It was amazing. We did do some research but it was hard to be motivated to leave our sun tanning posts in order to sit up and take a count through a telescope.
The best day by far was Saturday. I was eating breakfast and looked out at the water and saw a fin. I was like "Okay it's probably just a humpback or a gray, no big deal." I went outside and saw 6 and knew then they were killer whales. I ran into the house, it was only 6 am, and woke everyone up banging on the doors saying killer whales. Turns out it was 3 pods together and over 80 whales. We saw 4 breaches and some feeding on fish. Later in the day we saw 5 transient killer whales. We got to see the moon through the scope too and Jupiter the planet and its 4 moons all lined up. We watched the sunset from the hill where the lighthouse is. Yeah definitely spoiled.
Today, however, is not so exciting. We have 2 days to work on our papers and finish up our reports. They are due Wednesday and in the afternoon is a guest speaker. Thursday are our presentations of our projects and Friday is clean up/bbq day. I am attempting to mak the 10:15 am ferry on Saturday in order to have enough time in the day to make it all the way to Lethbridge. We'll see how that goes. I might have company all the way to Vancouver from Bamfield though so that will be entertaining.
I know I constantly bore you with my day to day schedule, but I just don't have anything else to write. The rest of the summer . . . well that's up in the air. Just working for Dad I guess. The fall plans are coming along, not finalized but getting there. After that . . . who knows. It seems that whenever I make plans for my life and future, something happens and things get so thrown around. Usually that something that happens is my knee blowing out and having to have surgery. So at this very moment in time I just want to work for a bit after I am done school in December and make some decisions later. That's the extent to the plans. I would like to travel a bit too and for sure do the West Coast Trail. Everytime I step on that trail the more I want to finish it.
Well so long for now from one dark skinned, very burnt, marine biologist!
