As promised, here are some pictures from the beach cleanup on Saturday just before we headed back to Caltech!
Here are some pictures from the rest of the trip.
I am posting a lot of pictures from today….I could not ask for more gorgeous sites to have visited.
There are over 300 miles of sewer lines in the canyons of San Diego. As can be expected, these sewers and manholes can get overloaded or break, spilling millions of gallons of untreated sewage and the contents of your toilet into the ocean and canyons. Only a few years ago, the EPA ranked San Diego in the worst quartile in terms of sewage spills. Thus, the San Diego Oceans Foundations works with the public to raise awareness and recruit volunteers to patrol the canyons and monitor the status of manholes and the sewage system. And so today, we drove out to Tecolote to clean up the canyon and inspect the manholes. The area we hiked was extremely wild and not charted (at times the trail simply disappeared). At one point, we ended up on the highway:
We finally arrived at the hostel in the afternoon. It’s the first day, and we’re getting settled in. Before it got too dark, we decided to take a jaunt down to the beach, which is located only a block and a half away from where we’re staying. The following is a message brought to you by two lovely members of the Caltech Y:
The hostel we’re staying at is located right in the middle of Ocean Beach, a salty-aired California town straight from the pages of a storybook. As I am writing in my room, I can hear Jamaican steel drums outside my window. All along the street are shops and indie cafes, and today the street was blocked off for the weekly Farmer’s Market where you can buy fresh produce, gorgeous flowers, and homemade crafts. We will be on the trail most of the day tomorrow, but we will hopefully get a chance to explore the streets in the evening. During the day, we will be hiking the Tecolote Canyon to inspect man-holes and the sewage system. The area we will be exploring is still in the process of being charted, so I’m sure we’ll be in for some surprises. We’ll also be on the look-out for animals as we help clean up the canyon.