pelf-ism is contagious

As with visiting the Strawberry Festival @ Oxnard, the trip to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History was also quite a last-minute decision. In fact, when we arrived at the museum, we had only an hour to check out the exhibits. Stephanie was particularly interested in the “special exhibition of the dinosaurs” and I had never been to the Santa Barbara Museum, so we thought, why not?

So the first thing that we did was to get to the exhibition room where all the dinosaurs were exhibited. We spent quite some time looking at the exhibits and reading about how the paleontologists worked to get the remains of the dinosaurs.

And this exhibition room…

… reminded me of “A Night At the Museum”. It was sooo surreal, I was feeling as thought I was in the movie, and something behind the glass would come to life and all..

And there was also a whale restoration project going on. The skeleton of the Blue Whale has been on display since 1983 and the exposure to the sun, rain and human contact has contributed to the natural process of decay. The restoration project was initiated to keep the popular display available to the public in the future.

More pictures of the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum here.

Up next: A visit to the Mojave Desert to look for desert tortoises.

P/S: Pictures taken during visits to other museums:

• American Museum of Natural History @ New York
• Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum @ Springfield, IL

I spent 8-wonderful-days with my host, Stephanie, and she took me to a lot of interesting places, and she was genuinely interested in making sure that I enjoyed myself while I was in California, and she made sure that I didn’t only do turtle-related work, but have fun as well

And one of the first fun things we did together was to put up a booth at the Turtle Show in Woodlands Hills. We had, well at least I had, a lot of fun during the Turtle Show

It was quite a last-minute decision to visit the Strawberry Festival @ Oxnard. By the time we were leaving for Oxnard, it was about 3:30 pm, and when we arrived at 4 pm, we thought we only had an hour to run around before the vendors pack their stuff and leave at 5 pm. But of course, when we arrived, we were told that it would be close an hour later, so we had more time!

There were a lot of things to see at the Strawberry Festival, especially to somebody who has never been to a Strawberry Festival before. A lot of booths were put up and people sell all kinds of things from strawberry potted plants to strawberry earrings to strawberry T-shirts and strawberry hats. You name it, they have it!

And somebody even went to the festival in a strawberry bikini! Can you believe it?!

I had so much fun at the Strawberry Festival @ Oxnard that I was sooo looking forward to the Strawberry Festival at Stone Harbor yesterday but unfortunately, I missed it. Two other interns went to the festival and came back with lots of food — strawberry cupcakes, strawberry short cakes, etc. I’m sure glad I love strawberries!

More pictures of the California Strawberry Festival @ Oxnard here.

Up next: A visit to the Natural History Museum @ Santa Barbara.

This pretty river is where Dr Wilson from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga conducts his studies on the riverine turtles. The first time I was out in the river, the weather wasn’t too kind, and we had some extremely strong winds and choppy water and I thought, for a moment, that we were in the sea!

But of course, after spending a few days in the river, I kind of fell in love with it

Anyway, the basking traps that we set out trapped about 250 turtles (mostly red-eared sliders, Trachemys scripta) in about a week. The baited hoop nets, on the other hand, did not trap any turtles.

In order to trap many turtles with the basking traps, the weather must be warm enough for the turtles to climb onto the traps. But if the weather was cloudy and if a storm was rolling in (there was once when we were in the river and a storm was supposed to roll in. It did not come, but we had isolated showers instead), the turtles wouldn’t be basking, and we wouldn’t find them in the traps the next day.

I am trying to arrange with my sponsors to see if it is possible that I return to Chattanooga in July for a Conservation Biology Conference. If that materializes, I hope I’d have the chance to visit the Tennessee River Gorge again!