Heathers Mucky World: Salt Marsh field trip

For our last field trip of the year, the wetlands class went to China Camp state park to get a look at a relatively pristine California saltmarsh. This is by far the funniest trip of the bunch, with side splitting giggles to be had by all. We even upped it a notch this year by arriving late and having an incoming tide to push things along. (We took a scenic tour of Vacaville in an attempt to pick up a student. Got the impression that there were 3 park and rides in the silly town, turns out we just circled one of them for 20 minutes!)

We started the day out climbing to the top of a hill so that we could get some perspective on what we were trying to accomplish. Unfortunately, the path was under reconstruction so we had to sneak around back and make our way through the bush. Never, with Eliska, will you miss out on wetland experience due to some silly rules! Weee!

Doesn't mean she won't fill your brain to bursting though

With all the gear needed, the best option as a TA, is to simply give it to the students to carry! ;)

The first obstacle of the day was to cross the tidal creek that you can see winding through the marsh in the first picture. Now, it doesn't look that wide now, but remember that it is about a meter deep, with a meter more of sticky sucking mud, and plants draping over the edge so you have no idea where the ground stops and the immanent fall begins. It took some of us a great deal of encouragement and assistance to cross...

While others got their kicks by laughing at us! Ok, maybe we all laughed at ourselves too, I know I did.

The most common plant here was pickleweed, or Salicornia/Sarcocornia (damn plant biologists constantly changing names ;) This plant has a really cool way of dealing with the high salt concentrations, by pumping it into the segments you can see in this pic, and shedding them when the concentration gets too high. Turns a pretty red too!

This part of the bay has managed to stay free (for now) of the invasive Spartina that is plaguing the rest of the bay. Here, we have a nice, well behaved population of the native.

When walking on the pickleweed, you can almost forget how treacherous wetlands can be to your walking ability, but the Spartina can bring it all back. As Eliska talked about fascinating tidbits and explained the procedures of the days work, people were slowly sinking... sinking... but sooo proud that they made it out!

Now I was such a giving and caring TA, (ha!) that I sacrificed my lovely boots to another so I had to stay on the relatively safe ground in the pickleweed. Look at the cool bug I found though!

The students go to experience all sorts of wetland techniques that day, including sucking water out of the ground to measure sulfides, yum yum.

Stephanie, getting a little sassy with RicIf you look closely, you can see the ranger's hat. Yes, we got into trouble. The man tromped all the way through the marsh to yell at us, but Eliska sweet talked our way out
On our way out, the tide had come up fully, and crossing that silly creek became even more of an ordeal. This time, assistance was a little more necessary...

and sometimes, not enough!

That started it all. Two more got pretty wet, though not quite so spectacularly so, and not 5 minutes later, as they were walking ahead, 3 people fell into a smaller creek hidden by the pickleweed, simultaneously! Ric, of course, had just crossed it, claims he warned everyone, but...