Many happy returns of the day...

We are up and at 'em, headed for the beach- hoping that the recent storms have washed up a strew of plastic. Envious of Janis Selby Jones' (Judith's' sister) soldier pic that she posted on Instagram and Litterati this morning, we are fueled by the competitive fire and are on the hunt for the plastic invasion —  will we find a marine Marine?

When Janis is not at the beach she is a school-based resource teacher at an elementary school in Oceanside, CA. She makes regular posts of her prize-winning images onto Litterati, a crowd sourced compendium of photographs that geo-tag tracks the who, what, where, and when of litter with the hope that this awareness will make for a litter free world.

At her school she is helping to institute a zero waste campaign and is working with students to organize a Green Team. Plus she keeps a blog Write the World where she posts about "living, learning, and teaching through photography and writing." YAY! Janis!

But the Norcal vs. Socal rivalry rears its transgressive head. Hey, Janis, we have two, yes 2 of those mortar men.          

See Fig A.

We looked all afternoon for that soldier. He was not to be found but maybe these tiny .5" binoculars were once his?

Although there was not much plastic, there are many other reasons for a trip to the beach. We marveled at the swoop and dive of the Peregrine Falcons and listened to their resounding cry echoing from the cliff side caves where they nest. And the enthusiastic troop of geology students from San Francisco State University was out in full force on the hunt for fossils.

Kehoe Beach is a favorite place for geology aficionados. It's a textbook case from the textbook Geology at Point Reyes:

Fossil marine mollusks and echinoids found at the base of the Laird Sandstone on Kehoe Beach indicate that deposition occurred in shallow during middle Miocene time (Clark and Brabb, 1997). These sandy facies grade into finer-grained rocks (sandstone, siltstone, and shale) of the lower Monterey Formation. The Monterey Formation grades upward into siliceous shales, porcellanite, and chert. The upper Monterey Formation yields fossil benthic foraminifera that suggest the sediments were deposited in bathyal depths (200 to 4,000 m) during middle to late Miocene time (Clark and others, 1984).

A day at the beach rain or shine, plastic or no, is always cause for celebration.

And, as the old adage goes, what goes round comes round...
or should we say,
many happy returns of the day...

Hey, Janis, we found this pic on the Internet.
Let's see who can find the whole set.