My sister was in town yesterday and we woke up and drove to Tiburon -- it was a sunny (if cold) day and I wanted to take advantage of the fact that it wasn't raining. After breakfast, we drove out toward Point Bonita in the Marin Headlands -- last time we had been there was on my birthday. It was freezing so our sightseeing consisted of driving a mile, hopping out of the car, looking for a minute or two and running back to the car. Repeat a few times and you have a good idea of what the trip was like.
One stop we made was at the Marine Mammal Center - well known in the Bay Area for their rescue efforts. They are the folks that you call when you see a marine animal in peril. Their goal is to rehabilitate and return to the wild. They don't keep the animals, and only turn them over to zoos and theme parks when there is no hope of their survival in the wild.
It is a very cool place. We saw four animals there yesterday -- including some very loud baby elephant seals that had been abandoned by their mothers. The Marine Mammal Center was working on getting them to full weight so that they could be sent out to live their lives in the wild.
But the star of the Marine Mammal Center right now is Chippy the Sea Lion -- who made news headlines when he swam up the river and very very far away from home. It was later discovered that he had a bullet lodged in his head and he is recuperating at the MMC -- and expected to be sent on his way pretty soon. We only saw him from afar -- sea lions, apparently, take very quickly to humans so the MMC keeps them away from the public in order to keep them wild and easily transition them back to their natural habitat.
