Fun Facts About Elephant Seals

We're back. Here are pictures of our primary camping activity: sitting around.

I'm not sure how anyone can camp without a Carhart. Because it's frigging cold in the woods, man.

These boots were made for waterproofin', and that's just what they did.

We went to Ano Nuevo State Park and got to see the molting female elephant seals. It turns out that all elephant seals travel by diving to 2000+ feet below the surface of the ocean, swimming for 10 - 20 minutes, surfacing and getting more air, and repeating. They do this to avoid sharks and orcas, which tend to be closer to the surface. The females go off the coast of Hawaii and eat buttloads of squid, while the males go to Alaska and eat buttloads of crusteceans. They return to Ano Nuevo at different times of year depending on whether they're there to have hot elephant seal sex, have little tiny 75 pound babies, or molt (which is when they hang out on the beach and lose a layer of skin.) Right now is female molting season, so we got to see 100+ of the ladies lying around making ridiculous noises and napping.

Elephant seals sound like this: "ORK ORK ORK ORK WAAAAAAHK --FART NOISE-- --FART NOISE-- WAAAAAAHK!"

The fart noises are fabulous. They do it because their bodies are designed for diving, not lying around on the beach, so even when they're on dry land they don't breath"normally." Instead, they expel all of the air in this huge fart-sounding explosion, get some more air, then hold their breath for 10 minutes. Trust me, when you have 100 of them all in a big pile and they're all doing that, it's hilarious.

Anyway, it was really fun. Becky's dad and Becky and I did a lot of beer-drinking, food-eating, and fire-sitting-around(ing). I feel prepared to go back and read another pile of Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall and EP Thompson.