Western University of Health Sciences

Matt Wedel

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This past weekend I was camping up the coast at Hearst San Simeon State
Park, with my son, London, and [Brian
Engh](http://dontmesswithdinosaurs.com/).

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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:

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image-title="Piedras Blancas elephant seal rookery – Boucher Trail start"
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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:

[]{.embed-youtube style="text-align:center; display: block;"}

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

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

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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!


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Rogue Scholar Beiträge

Brontosmash: The Field Trip (the teaser)