Marine Mammal Center

Nate's latest adventure is the Cub Scouts.  He is officially a Tiger Scout.  With Maria's help, she recruited a bunch of Nate's friends and their parents to join him on the adventure.  We recently had our first Den meeting and on Oct 15, they went on their first "Go See it".

This is the Class "B" uniform.  It's not required that he be in full scout gear, but recommended that he wear a scout T-shirt.  We got this bright orange one, which is the Tiger scout colors and is great to spot him a mile away, which he frequently is about as far away from us as he can get.

Ethan and Nate at the entrance to the Marine Mammal Center.  Nate got the extra special privilege of getting Ethan to ride with us to Marin and back. 

While the center is focused on healing sick mammals, they were wrapping up an exhibit where they were displaying art made from the trash that had been thrown into the ocean. 

Here's a starfish, zoom in and see how clever they were with using all the different types of trash.

This is a jelly fish, made mostly out of clear plastic water bottles.

A giant sea turtle.

One of the demonstrations was how the volunteers would help an injured baby seal found on the beach into a crate so they could be transported back to the shelter for medical help.

One person in charge of the crate, one with a large net and two boys holding wooden "shields" used to limit the direction the seal could run.

The tour guide said to get the seal into the crate and Nate pushed his shield up and onto the seal flipper, then proceeded to kick the seal into the crate.  Thank goodness it's a stuffed seal and Nate wasn't responsible for the health of a truly sick seal.  Although I have to say all the adults got a real kick out of his seal kicking.

After the tour, we headed over to Rodeo Beach on the Marin headlands, so we could enjoy a picnic lunch and fun on the beach before the scouts would go earn their "Leave No Trace" badge by picking up trash on the beach.  It's a great concept to partner that with the recently learned lesson about how all the trash was hurting the sea animals.

The boys playing a bit of tug o war with a piece of seaweed. 

Nate stopped for a little bit to eat and got close enough for photo op.

It was a little colder than we had thought.  Was supposed to be upper 70's, but with the cloud cover and breeze it felt a bit cooler. 

We had a great time and look forward to more outings like these with the scouts.  The drive was a bit long, but it was nice to see a bit of Marin that I had not seen before.  We drove through the Bunker tunnel, which was interesting.  We learned the Marine Mammal Center was privately funded, at over $30M.  The people are really friendly and dedicated to help these sick animals get back to health.