Friday 8/25- Another Friday meant another walk for Ramie. Today Val had returned from her trip back to Canada and would be rejoining the team. Ramie also reached out to Freddy, (who works for Loren at OMG) to see if he wanted to join us for a walk. Freddy had originally signed up to do turtle walks but because of his schedule he has yet to make one. Today he was available so it would be the 4 of them walking. It was only about 15 minutes into the walk this morning that they found the first turtle tracks and nest. Ramie assisted Freddy (who has never had the experience of locating and digging a nest) while the others continued down the beach.
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| Freddy counting the eggs as he collects them. |
About 5 minutes later Ramie looked down the beach to see how far the others made it and they were only about 200 feet away digging out a 2nd nest. They continued to leap frog down the beach and by the time they reached the turn-around point Ramie’s team found 7 nests on the beach.
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| Happy he got another nest |
Later that morning they found out that this was a record-breaking day! The whole team was very excited that they broke a record and Freddy was extremely excited to have been a part of it.
The hardest part about breaking the record today was carrying 7 nests between the 4 people. Ramie and David each had 2 in their backpacks, which probably weighed close to 50 lbs because the eggs have to be packed in sand. Val had one in her backpack, which Freddy offered to carry and then Val and Freddy each carried a bag in their arms.
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| Loaded with eggs and making the walk back to the cars. |
If they had found any more they may have had to make more trips back and forth up the beach. This brings the total to 11 nests that Ramie’s team found this week alone, and they have now found at least 1 nest on each beach walk for 7 weeks straight. Just think of all of the baby turtles these guys are saving, and there are other teams that walk the other 5 days a week at this beach, and different teams that walk every day at another beach. Saving turtles is serious business!!
Marshall and Val are a husband and wife that are members of David & Ramie’s turtle walking team but Marshall hasn't been doing turtle walks due to a recent back injury. Anyway, they have a Friday evening tradition of going to Mosaic wine bar & restaurant and have a standing reservation for the couch area every week at the same time. Tonight, they invited Ramie and David to come down and celebrate the big record-breaking turtle day with some drinks and dinner and extended the invitation to me, even though I’m not “officially” part of the team. Even though we hardly ever go out (especially if it’s a last-minute invitation) I needed to get out and forget about the craziness of work that is STILL going on (yes, it’s been over a month of emergencies, putting out fires, and working extra hours each week and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight).
We didn’t expect to be gone real long, so we left Skye out of her kennel again to see how she does. We only have 1 camera set up in the house so we probably wouldn’t really be able to tell what she was up to while we’re gone. Fingers crossed she doesn’t get into any big trouble, we’ll just have to trust her!
We haven’t been to Mosaic since our first vacation here (about 6 years ago), so we couldn’t really remember what their menu was like. We do know, though, that they are one of the few places down here that you can get good wine, and we were happy to order a bottle of red that turned out to be really good.
The turtle walking team and I enjoyed the evening full of laughs and fun stories, and ended up staying out later than originally expected. It wasn’t LATE, but we left Skye roaming the house for longer than anticipated. I was a little bit nervous to see what she may have gotten into when left to her own devices.
On the way home I pulled up the camera so we could see what she did when she heard the car pulling up. I didn’t see her on camera until we got close to the house and then she ran out from our bedroom and to the front door, needless to say she was very excited to see us. Ramie and I checked the house for accidents or damage, anything naughty that she could have gotten herself into, but didn’t find anything. That’s a good sign!! I did go into the bedroom to feel for warm spots on the bed, and from what I can tell, she was probably laying on Ramie’s pillow because that was where the warm area was.
I guess she’ll be ok to be left out for a few hours at a time, but I don’t think I’d trust her for a full day like when we go to San Isidro. At least not yet!
Sunday 8/27- It’s been a while since we’ve taken Dusti out for a ride; between just being busy in general & now having Skye to worry about, we just haven’t really had the chance. We decided that just like last week when we brought her to the beach, today this puppy dog would get to have another new experience. Today she was going to go for her first ATV ride. She seems to have pretty good balance when we go for a ride in the car, but this will be a much rougher ride so we had to take some precautions. We don’t trust her to sit on the seat both because of her claws and because we don’t want her to fall in the foot wells, so this would take a little bit of creativity. I figured that if I flipped the seat bottoms up but left the seat backs in their regular position it would give her enough space to sit in-between. I then put a rug across the seat rails so she wouldn’t get her toes stuck on them if she slid or fell, and we had a nice little cozy area for the puppy dog to sit. We also discovered that the seat belt leash connection that we have for the truck does not work with the ATV seat belts, so we had to improvise again by putting her leash around one of the bars in Dusti and attaching it to her harness. Ok, this looks like it should work! Let’s go!
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| Im such a big girl, lets go mom and dad! |
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| So much stuff to look at! |
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| Im not so sure about this wind on my face, but this is kinda fun! |
Our nervous little puppy did quite well for her first trip! She didn’t fall down or slide around too badly, but she did try to crawl up to the front a few times. If I kept my arm back in her area she seemed to do better, so that’s what I did. We brought her to the waterfall to take her swimming again and keep her used to going in the water.
With the green season in full swing, the water was flowing quickly and was a bit deeper than we were expecting, the river crossing part of the road got to be about knee deep in the middle. We parked Dusti and brought Skye out to play. Of course she was nervous at first and it took quite a bit of coaxing and making her feel “left out” when we both walked into the water, but she did go in and play a little bit. The water was pretty chilly today, though, and this is probably the coldest thing that this doggy has ever felt other than when we gave her an ice cube to play with and eat!
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| I'm coming dad! |
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| Splash, Splash, Splash! |
When we were finished playing in the water we decided to go back home instead of continuing on, this was probably enough adventure for the little pup for one day. This is another one of those activities, just like going to the beach, that we’ll have to continue doing with her to get her comfortable. we’re going to make this little chicken Skye the Adventure Dog yet! 😉
Wednesday 8/30- Ray and Wesley have their son and his girlfriend visiting and they wanted to go on a turtle walk so Ramie offered to bring them with this morning. Sadly, today they got skunked! All good things must come to an end and today just happened to be that day. Ramie and his team had a good run finding nests but it’s unfortunate that when there were visitors that were hoping to experience the thrill of finding a nest, it just didn't happen. At least they still enjoyed the sunrise walk.
Thursday 8/31- The plan for today was to bring Derek & Joanne to San Isidro with us to show them around to the places that we frequent.
This would be our first trip back to San Isidro since we brought Skye home and were worried about leaving her home in the kennel by herself all day since she gets so worked up and didn’t trust her enough to stay out of her kennel all day. Izzy is still coming to our house on days that Ray & Wesley have to go to her doctor appointments and the dogs are getting along great, so we asked them if they would consider taking Skye for the day. Ray always loves to see Skye when they drop off and pick up Izzy, and he was excited to get to take her for the day. Ramie dropped Skye off at their house bright and early this morning, Derek & Joanne met us at our house, and we were on the road by our normal 7am start time.
We took them to our regular stops, the feria, some of the random stores that we like the best, Walmart, and the plant nursery. We had a full carload and the nursery was the last stop, but we found a beautiful hibiscus tree that we just could not pass up, so the tree sat on the floor in the back seat between Derek & Joanne on the way home. Sorry, I didn’t end up taking any pictures, but I’m sure it was quite the sight for anyone who could see into our fully loaded vehicle!
We were home, had the car unloaded and most of our purchase put away by about 2:00 and then Ramie went to pick Skye up from her play date. It turns out the dogs had just as much fun today up at Ray & Wesley's house as they do when they are at ours. Ramie told me that Wesley also fell in love with Skye now that she got to meet her and spend some time with her, so I think there will be plenty of puppy play dates continuing into the future and we have a possible babysitter when we need to leave Skye for a day.
The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of August rainfall total was 13.35 inches
Pura Vida!
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