May 1, 2023

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On Saturday, Apr 29, there was a volunteer cleanup event organized for a Girl Scout Gold Award with SOLVE starting a Patterson State Park. I attended for 2 hours and saw many volunteers walking near the park and south on Mile 200. When I left, there were bags of trash collected by the volunteers and a couple of abandoned crab pots. I picked up a bucket full of trash - flip flops, styrofoam, plastic pieces, plastic water bottles, beer cans, and some rope. I had hoped to walk my mile this day but instead returned two days later. There were 6 cars in the parking lot this Monday morning and the weather varied the whole time I walked the mile - cloudy, then rainy and finally sun. Patterson Creek was flowing nicely and there was an abundance of sandpipers feeding in the creek near the ocean.  As I walked south,  I saw a couple of Mallard ducks in the ocean, some Whimbrels feeding on the beach and near the ocean (so nice of them to stop by on their way migrating north) and a pair of Black Turnstones. About midway through the walk, I saw 3 turkey vultures feeding on a bird carcass. Unfortunately, I did not see any snowy plovers like I did last time. The high tide line had a few sticks, lots of rocks, some shells and crab body pieces. The beach was fairly clean but I did see a few plastic water bottles even after the big cleanup on Saturday. The vertical wooden log on the dune that I use as a reference for finding one of the paths to 101 was not there anymore. I did find the path using GPS, but the dune was way too high to reach it.  I saw lots of erosion on this dune. One of the sandstone bluffs with graffiti (Chris loves Staci) has a large piece of rock crumbling from the bluff. Near Big Stump, most of the debris that I saw last time had been cleared from the sets of stairs that lead from the cottages and beach houses to the beach.