Where Curiosity Takes Me: Earth Day & Coastal Cleanup

Happy Earth Day!

Ken, Kelsie, Me, Mark

Back in 1970 Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin founded Earth Day and ever since then April 22^nd has been known as Earth Day! Many different organizations, groups, individuals, companies (basically all sorts of people) participate in Earth Day doing some sort of event that helps Mother Nature. It can be as small as a single person deciding to walk to work instead of drive or someone picking up a piece of trash off the ground to huge organizations that are funded and supported that attract hundreds of people from different areas to get together and make a huge impact.

Kelsie & Ken with their full bags.

This was my second year participating with Washington Coast Savers for their Coastal Cleanup that took place the Saturday right before Earth Day. All down the Washington coast groups of people gather to spend their day picking up marine debris scattered all across the beach. It’s amazing how many people get together to do such an amazing thing for the earth. It was estimated that there were over 1,000 participants this year that together cleaned up an estimated 15 tons of trash!!! I feel honored to be apart of this feat.

There were four of us that participated in the Ozette area on the Northern Coast of Washington. Last year we camped at Sand Point but this year we hiked another mile south of there to a less crowded section of the beach. Kelsie and her dad, Ken, had already filled up all 8 of their garbage bags by the time Mark and I showed up (we got a super late start to the day!)

We camped from Friday through Sunday and it was a cold and wet weekend. It didn’t pour us during the day, but it was a constant drizzle or mist while we collected our trash. Sun wasn’t forecasted until Sunday…and it didn’t grace us with it’s presence until Sunday! It’s definitely a treasure hunt when you pick up trash on the coast, you never know what you’ll find. Besides ropes, buoys, and other marine-type debris, there is also a lot leftover from the tsunami that happened over in Japan a couple years ago. It’s always fun to find things that are written in foreign characters, and the artwork on some of their food bottles are a lot cuter too! We found a few shoes (no feet, thankfully, like what has been found before) that were obviously from across the ocean along with tires, what looked like a little fridge, a broom, pallets, and lots of Styrofoam. We also saw a coyote running across the beach Friday night as we hung out at camp thanks to Kelsie’s eagle eye!

Remember to help preserve the world we live in by doing your part. It doesn’t take much, instead of walking past that piece of trash on the ground how about you pick it up and toss it in the trash instead? There are many things you can do, individually or with a group. Look online, there are tons of organizations that you can volunteer with!

Here are bunch of pictures from the weekend...