Benjamin Island

In Mid-May we paddled out to Benjamin Island to see the sea lions. We hiked through the woods, surprised at how many wind falls there were and also surprised that someone had left a campfire smoldering. The breeze likely whipped it back up. I got a good chuckle at the new signs posted. It's never my intention to get close enough to a 500 lb animal to feed it. No thank you.

It was a Friday afternoon and so we had the island all to ourselves. A little creepy. A little satisfying. There was no one to make us feel guilty about how much time we spent watching the sea lions. I enjoyed seeing the little pups nursing and the teenagers harassing each other. Mr. X liked the lion with what appeared to be an entire salmon stuck to the side of his face...err looks like you got a little something right there.

There was enough of a cold breeze that we hiked back to east side of the island to eat our sandwiches. Mr. X was impressed with the new benches someone has made. On our paddle back to boulder beach we managed to scare both ourselves and a solitary sea lion. He was minding his own business, diving and playing. Unfortunately our timing was poor because he surfaced about 10 feet from us. We were glad he chose to re-dive immediately. Crossing back to the mainland we had to navigate through some fairly deep waters that also happen to go from protected to less protected. I'll admit the rolling waves made me a little sea-sick and I couldn't enjoy watching the water birds until we got out of the wind tunnel. Then I was pleased to see bonaparte gulls, scoters, and grebes.