The day started off at 8:40 with a breakfast of eggs, tortilla, bacon, and fruit at the picnic tables. It was nice to get a lazy wake up especially because many of us struggled to sleep our first night in the tents on the ground. 

The group at breakfast (Photo credit: Isabelle Osborn) 

After breakfast we took a light walk towards the dock to meet up with Caroline Grauman-Boss, Tom Grauman, and Adam Martin. Adam works at the Ecology Institute as one of Washington’s most respected applied restorative ecologists. He specifically studies the impacts of pressures of the Anthropocene on alien and native plant diversity in the San Juan area. Once we had met up with Adam we took a leisurely walk around the forested area near the dock, pausing to look at seemingly small yet quite significant pieces of Jones Island’s ecosystem. 

Adam explaining the burn marks on a douglas fir (Photo credit: Annalise Krabak)

Our walk ended with us up on a bluff by a burn site of overgrown Douglas firs that Adam Martin and his team dealt with a couple years ago by protecting the native Garry oaks along with their burning maintenance. 

Adam talking to the group on the bluff (Photo credit: Sophie Li)

After our walk we had a lunch of pita pockets and fixings then a couple hours of free time which many took to enjoy a hike around the island. During one group’s hike they saw baby Harbour seals.

Seal pups Frank Ocean and George Clooney (Photo credit: Isabelle Osborn) 

After free time we had dinner together despite the rain and thunder with a tasty treat of strawberry shortcake. Lights out for most was 9pm due to the early wake up time of 5am the next day for the kayak back.