December 13, 2023

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Patterson creek had a heavy flow of water coming down to the ocean this afternoon. After last week's heavy rains, it was not surprising to see that the water had created a 2 foot ridge along certain parts of the creek. Saw a beautiful heron near the creek close to the ocean. I decided to walk the mile after the King Tide that occurred today at 11:45am to see how far the tide came up. The high tide line was not as high as I expected probably because the ocean was very calm. The beach area between the high tide line and the sand dunes was filled with logs, sticks, kelp pieces, crab pieces and trash. I saw 6 dead birds among the debris. I also so a skate egg case near the ocean. As I got closer to the Big Stump, I saw a large orange item near the ocean. I was very puzzled as to what it could be and once I got closer, discovered it was a 3 foot diameter carved jack-o-lantern! After reaching Big Stump and turning around to walk north near the bank underneath the houses, I smelled something foul. It turned out to be a very old carcass of a sea lion or something similar. As I walked north, I could see evidence of the tides bringing large logs near the bottom of the bank and sand dunes. One section of sandstone cliffs had a lot of water dribbling down the cliff washing away the graffiti and unfortunately the sandstone too. Last time, I saw two plastic stools that someone had added to the dune to access the beach but these were gone today. I inspected the area where there was a brush fire in July. Grass is growing nicely and there were no signs of waves topping over the area. It took me awhile to find the protruding log that I have been capturing every walk. It is still there but covered with sand. The trash I saw today consisted of various plastics, rope pieces, tennis shoe, red blanket, large carved pumpkin, plastic bottle, and of course Styrofoam.