Category: travel

So – I had an incredible 24 hours from Tuesday about noon to Wednesday about noon and going to provide some details here.

First, I went in to Marin County on Tuesday AM. I headed there because there was a reception in the evening for “Gorilla Doctors“. Gorilla Doctors is an absolutely incredible organization that I have become involved in over the last 1.5 years. What is the Gorilla Doctors group? Well, this is the summary from their website:

Gorilla Doctors is the only organization in the world dedicated to saving the mountain and eastern lowland (Grauer’s) gorilla species one gorilla patient at a time using veterinary medicine and science with a One Health approach. Our international veterinary team provides hands-on medical care to ill and injured mountain and Grauer’s gorillas living in the national parks of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). With only 1,063 mountain gorillas, and an ever decreasing number of Grauer’s gorillas left in the world today, the health and well-being of every individual gorilla is vital to the species’ survival. Our veterinary team regularly monitors the health of mountain and Grauer’s gorillas and intervenes to treat individuals with life-threatening illness or injury whenever possible.

And I have now been working with them to help plan some microbial studies and to help train some of their people in microbial studies. This started with an email from Dr. Tierra Smiley Evans who is their Chief Veterinary and Scientific Officer and who was at UC Davis at the time (she is now on the faculty at UC Berkeley). Together we got a grant from UC Davis to run a microbiome workshop in Rwanda (which happened in October last year). I will write MUCH MUCH more about Gorilla Doctors soon. But for the purposes of this post, what is key is that I have gotten involved in this incredible group and I am fully committed to helping with their mission of protecting mountain gorillas. And I recently was appointed to their Advisory Council. I was invited to this reception due to my role on this council and as I am new to the group I was very excited to go to it and meet many of the people involved.

As the event was in the evening in Marin County and as I really did not want to drive back in the evening from their to Davis, I decided to stay overnight. And so I headed out in the mid morning towards Marin and decided to go to Pt. Reyes on the way there. As part of my “getting in the mood” and learning more about mountain gorillas, I bought the audiobook version of the “Walking with Gorillas” book by Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka. And I put it on and headed out.

On the way there, I pulled over on highway 37 in the San Pablo Wildlife Refuge to stretch and took some bird pics. Here are a few.

I got back in my car, put the book back on, and continued the drive. I note – the book was quite excellent. More on that perhaps another time. I had this great plan to go to Pt. Reyes and maybe go to the Visitor Center there and sit down and do my Zoom calls. So I pulled in to the Visitor Center parking area, got out my laptop and headset and walked on over to the Center. Well, it was VERY VERY dark. And closed. Oops. I had forgotten about the Government Shutdown. Grr. I had also hoped to use their Wifi for my call and that was not on. Alas, when I tried to connect via my phone, that did not work because, well, my coverage barely had a pulse. So instead I drove around Pt. Reyes and looked for another place to hang out for my Zoom calls. The drive around was very nice. Lots of nice scenes like this:

Eventually I went to Lighthouse Beach and tried to connect there too. But still did not work. So I went for a short walk and took more pics. Here are some.

So my great plan of doing my Zoom calls from the road had failed but, well, onward. I then headed to the place I was staying, the Sand Piper, checked in, and headed over to the reception which was nearby.

The reception was really nice and also incredibly valuable to me. I have seen online many of the people involved in Gorilla Doctors but have not met most of them. And so I got to meet members of the Board, Technical Advisors, and people working for Gorilla Doctors. And I got to see Dr. Sonia Ghose, who is now working in Tierra Smiley Evans’ lab at Berkeley. Sonia was a PhD student in my lab who had worked on frog microbiomes and many issues relating to conservation of frogs. And again, I will write a lot more about Gorilla Doctors at other times. I will note, I told everyone that I was going to go to Pt. Reyes early in the AM Wednesday before heading back to UC Davis for afternoon meetings and that my main goal was to see a bobcat.

Then I headed back to the Sandpiper. It was a nice place. Here are a few pics.

I then set an alarm for very early and went to sleep.

I got up at 6:00 AM or so, packed up my stuff, and then dropped off my key in the dark office area.

And I headed out to Pt. Reyes. Tuesday night I had googled looking for where people recommended going to possibly see bobcats and most sites said to head to the Northern part of Pt. Reyes towards Tomales Point. So I drove slowly through Olema and then through Inverness and eventually headed out towards Tomales Point (heading towards the blue circle on the map below). For most of the drive I was listening to the Walking with Gorillas book …

It was still pretty dark when I was heading through Pt. Reyes and I saw a few interesting things and took some pics but I note – my camera is not really set up to get good pics when it is dark out. But here are a few from dawn at Pt. Reyes.

Then I got to the end of the road at Pierce Point Ranch decided to go for a walk on the Inverness Point Trail.

I did not have a TON of time as I had to get back to UC Davis mid PM, but I ended up going to a maybe 1 hour walk. And of course, I kept hoping I would see a bobcat. Alas, no. I did see a lot of elk and some nice raptors. But no bobcat. But the scenery was very nice.

And I took a bunch of pics with my good camera (Nikon D500, Nikkor 500 mm f / 5.6). As mentioned above, it does not do great in low light so the first pics were sitll a bit rough as it was still barely light out.

But as it got lighter my pics got a bit better.

And eventually I had made it back to the parking lot but not after a rough little stretch where I had massively low blood sugar and had to sit for a bit and eat glucose tablets. So I was sad I had not seen a bobcat. But it was beautiful. And now it was time to at least start heading back out of the park and towards UC Davis for my meetings.

I drove slowly and pulled over a few times as I saw cool things. There were a TON of elk and quite a few coyotes out and lots of raptors. Here are some of the pics I got during my slow drive.

It was pretty spectacular to be honest. And alas time was running out. And then, on a ridge I saw something as I was driving slowly. I pulled over and took some pics.

I was pretty sure it was a cat … but I just kept firing away rather than look in more detail.

Yes, definitely a cat. A bobcat. I could not believe my luck. Here are some of the pics zoomed in a bit …

I saw it walk over the ridge and I drove forward a bit to see if I could find it again but never did. But what a blessing. Only the 5th bobcat I have ever seen. I will cherish this for a long long time.