This week has been full of adventures! We started the week in Garibaldi doing visitor surveys, visitor intercepts and fishing pressure observations at Oswald West State Park. We also hiked an incredibly beautiful about 5.5 mile trail up to Cape Falcon where we saw plenty of seabirds and sea lions playing around. Following our time in Garibaldi we spent Wednesday and Thursday in Florence getting to know the town very well through business surveys. Florence is a charming town, particularly the Oldtown section of it that is full of cute little boutiques and delicious restaurants. The main reason people come to the Florence area is to play on the vast sand dunes, but this town has much more to offer than just the dunes. We got to know many of the residents of Florence doing business surveys throughout the town and I can say with certainty that I will be returning to visit! Today is a day of entering some of the immense amount of data that we have accumulated over the week into the computer. Next week we will be headed back up to Garibaldi to play, I mean “work”, some more. Until then!

This week has been a whirlwind of information at my new job with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife looking at the human dimensions aspect of the marine reserves. I am currently writing this post from my hotel in Garibaldi, a town located a couple hours north of Newport. The graduate student I am working with named Theo and I will be heading up to Garibaldi frequently to do observational and survey research of people using the beach and boats in the reserves at Cape Falcon. My mentor says we’re basically getting paid to hang out on the beach and talk to surfers all day, so not too shabby of a gig I’ve got here right? On the drive up today we stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory and sampled some of the delicious cheese they produce.

We also scoped out the sites that we will be doing these studies at and they were some of the most beautiful places I’ve seen on the Oregon coast. If you ever want to try your hand at surfing then head to Oswald West State Park! There were dozens of surfers in the cove there when we arrived. Overall I am excited to head back to Garibaldi next Monday and begin doing the studies!