Elk, California, on Turkey Day, Part 1

Steve and I spent Thanksgiving at the Elk Cove Inn, south of Mendocino, on the coast of Northern California. No cell-phone coverage, no T.V., just two days of hiking, reading, eating and sleeping. Part 2 tomorrow!

Riding Shotgun

Here's Maya flying over Cache Creek in Northern California. The team is using radio telemetry to search for elk with radio collars and/or ear tags; once located, Maya and her coworkers plot the GPS coordinates on a map to track the animals' range.

When Steve saw this photo, he said the plane looked like a Cessna 185 taildragger, the aircraft he flew in to count waterfowl as a wildlife biologist in Oregon in the late 1970s. He says he put in 100-150 hours a year at roughly 150 feet and 20 percent flaps. "We went as slow as we could go without stalling." Oh. Well. That's reassuring.

My Little Top Gun

Maya, worn out after a day of tagging elk in San Luis Obispo, heads for the helicopter...