Flat Muchy in Crescent City, CA
/Hello Ms. Appel and Class Members!
Thank you for sending Flat Muchy to Crescent City, California. Crescent City is the northernmost town on the California coast. We have several beautiful Pacific Ocean beaches. Mr. Muchy and I visited the area today.
Here he is standing by a “Crescent City Harbor” sign:
Can you see him in the lower right corner? The beach you see in the background is called South Beach and is great for walking, running, surfing and generally getting sandy (as one does at beaches!)
While in the harbor, we searched for Stellar Sea Lions, of which we have many. There is a rookery (a land place where the sea lions give birth and rest) just offshore from one of our beaches. From this beach, you can hear them barking, which sounds much like a pack of dogs barking: Arff, Arff, Arff!
Sometimes, the Sea Lions come right up on that concrete dock you see behind Muchy, but they were not there today. Because they are wild animals, their behavior toward humans is unpredictable. Therefore, as the sign instructs, “Stay back at least 50 ft” and “Do NOT approach Seals or Sea Lions.”. Stellar Sea Lions can weigh about 600 pounds and grow to 8 feet long!
While in the Crescent City Harbor, Muchy and I viewed some of the many fishing boats moored there. You can see some of them behind Muchy, with names like “Beautiful”, Kristen Gale” and “Gladnik”.
Their captains and crews are getting ready to fish for crab and this is what the crab pots look like:
Each fishing boat has a different color of floats (the orange and yellow things you see inside the pots), so they know which pots belong to them.
Muchy liked the bicycle rack we found. Can you guess which animal it is? Have you ever seen an octopus?
Do you know what a Tsunami is? Tsunami is a Japanese word for “harbor wave”. A tsunami is a series of waves much larger than normal that occur as a result of an earthquake. Here, Mr Muchy is learning about a tsunami that damaged the Crescent City harbor and its boats in 2011:
We have two lighthouses near Crescent City. One is called Battery Point Lighthouse and the other is called St George Reef Lighthouse. In the photo below, Muchy is posing near the Battery Point Lighthouse. You can see the trail leading out to it and you can walk to it at low tide. But better keep watch! You must leave before the tide comes in, as the trail is underwater during high tide!
Although Muchy is not in it, here is a much better picture of Battery Point Lighthouse:
The other lighthouse, St George Reef, is located about 6 miles from shore where it was built onto a big rock. No one lives out there now, although lighthouse keepers used to. It has an automatic solar-powered light that guides boats away from Dragon Rocks. Here is a photo of it:
Because we live on the coast, sometimes sea creatures like Harbor Seals, Stellar Sea Lions and others become injured or get sick and need to be rescued. We have a Marine Mammal Center in Crescent City, kind of like a hospital for sick or injured sea animals, where these creatures can be helped back to health and released back into the wild. Muchy and I visited today and there were three animal “patients”: Zeus, Atlas and Apollo, all young Harbor Seals. They were very curious and popped up out of their swimming pools to say “Hi!”
As we drove away from the Marine Mammal Center, we saw this massive colony of sea gulls (I believe they are Glaucous-winged Gulls) enjoying the sunshine and cool ocean breezes:
There are many other interesting places and things to explore near Crescent City. We live near Jedediah Smith State Park, where you can see some of the largest Redwoods in the world! Running through this park is a crystal-clear river called the Smith River, named after an early explorer of the area named Jedediah Smith. Jace asked if there are any otters where we live. Yes! We have seen them while paddleboarding and rowing on the Smith River. We have also seen North American Beaver, Pileated Woodpeckers, Merganser Ducks and lots of other species. We have several herds of Roosevelt Elk, which are very large and majestic-looking mammals.
This area is also home to two tribes of First-Nations people, the Yurok and Tolowa peoples. There are many fascinating things to learn from how they lived in this beautiful land.
Finally, although this is not geography-related, Muchy learned to play Pickleball today! Here is a photo of he and his new Pickleball friends. If you look closely, you will see that he has his own pickleball paddle:
And because I was told Muchy likes pumpkins . . .
I hope you learn lots of things about other places and people from this project and I thank you warmheartedly for sending Muchy down to stay with us for a bit of time.
Sincerely,
Ginger
Crescent City, CA