By blackmountaincycles,
Filed under: Rides
We picked a pretty cool time to move to Pt. Reyes. Just after we moved here, work began on the restoration of the upper end (south end) of Tomales Bay. For the past 60 years, the land had been protected from the water by a series of levees creating pasture land for grazing cattle at the Giacomini dairy. Yesterday, an excavator broke through one of the last levees allowing water to rush into the newly created Giacomini Wetlands. It would have been neat to see the water rushing in, but running the shop preempted the viewing. From what I understand, no one really knew what would happen with the water, but water did rush into the lower elevations. Must have been quite a site.
Today, I thought I’d take a ride up both sides of Tomales bay – up to Marshall and back and up to Inverness and back to see what the bay/wetlands looked like. Pretty cool. It was also reported that leopard sharks and rays made their way into the former pasture too.
I took some pics on the east side, but the battery in the camera died before I could get over to the west side.
This area already had water in it, but I thought it looked neat.
 |
| From Ride Photos |
 |
| From Ride Photos |
I rode out the Tomales Bay trail to view the new wetlands. A mile of this cow hoof pock-marked trail made things interesting.
 |
| From Ride Photos |
That big expanse of water is where it is newly flooded wetland. Imagine cows grazing just over a year ago. The channel third from the bottom is where the water is flowing from Tomales Bay. While I was watching, a seal (at least I thought it was some kind of seal) cruised up into the wetlands.
 |
| From Ride Photos |
The channel just above the light colored bank is the new flow. There’s a white egret on the shore waiting for a new meal to cruise by. The water was flowing fairly vigorously.
 |
| From Ride Photos |
(What’s playing: Lucinda Williams Car Wheels on a Gravel Road)
0 responses to “Wetlands restoration…”
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Very very cool…to see sharks and whatnot swimming in a pasture…well, that doesn’t happen every day.
And regarding your song choice…very nice. Lucinda rocks. My lady and I are going to check her out at First Ave in a little over a week.
If you ever get the chance to check out a live show, go for it. Great voice.