Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

This past weekend I was camping up the coast at Hearst San Simeon State Park, with my son, London, and Brian Engh.

We went to see the elephant seal colony at Piedras Blancas. It was my first time seeing elephant seals in the wild. Not having done any research in advance, I was expecting something like this:

In other words, a small number of elephant seals, not doing much, basically at binocular distance from the viewing area. Obviously we did get some of that, since I have a picture of it. But that was up the coast a bit, at the start of Boucher Trail near the Piedras Blancas lighthouse.

We spent most of our time at the main Piedras Blancas rookery, where just the southeastern half of the viewing area looked – and sounded – like this:

We also saw a lot of this (semi-groady iPhone-through-binocular shot by me):

and even some of this (much nicer photo courtesy of Brian Engh):

I’ll have a lot more to say about this real soon, including more video, but it’s late and I need sleep. Stay tuned!