Santa Rosa Island

So I always especially when there's a medical challenge, I always call Nana in as she's my angelic nurse.

so then i said could you please give me a sign that you're here with us and right after that so i'm looking around waiting to hear from either one right across was the desk where the nurse was sitting and one of the other medical professionals was then having a conversation with her about going out to the channel islands And one of the Channel Islands is named Santa Rosa.

So he was talking about the other islands, but he kept stressing Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa, that island.

He kept going back to that.

And my mother-in-law went to a college in Albany, New York for her nursing called St.

Rose.

And all of a sudden it dawned on me, he kept saying Santa Rosa.

And I went, oh my gosh, St.

And one of those samples is this bone.

I think it was a few bones, but the femur was the main one found on Santa Rosa Island in the Channel Islands off the coast of California.

And so that was back in the 1950s when Phil Orr was the curator at Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.

And he was actually looking for remains of pygmy mammoths, which are this really kind of adorable smaller mammoth.

But he's looking for this thing and he's like, I think, kind of... digging a Jeep trail or something, and he sees a bone sticking out of the side of this canyon.

And this is a really remote canyon.

It takes a lot of effort to get out there on Santa Rosa Island.

That is not the easiest place to get to.

It's in the Channel Islands in Southern California.

And ironically, it's right next to Santa Rosa Island, which I'm from the town of Santa Rosa.

So it felt slightly odd going from Santa Cruz to Santa Cruz Island and being able to look at Santa Cruz Island.

And that's where I was.

There's encouraging news from Channel Islands National Park.

The National Park Service announced that overnight camping will resume in select areas of Santa Rosa Island beginning October 14th.

This follows a significant wildfire that burned more than 18,000 acres between May 15th and June 4th this year.

For anyone unfamiliar with Santa Rosa Island, it's one of the more remote and extraordinary destinations within Channel Islands National Park.

Water Canaan Campground offers basic facilities including drinking water, toilets, picnic tables, food storage boxes, and wind shelters.

But make no mistake, this isn't the same experience as pulling into a conventional campground on the mainland.