Our association held a strategic planning session this past weekend at Asilomar Conference Center. Our board of directors and staff, along with representatives from the National Park Service and Delaware North Parks and Resort Company attended this important meeting. We reviewed our five-year strategic plan developed in 1999, and outlined a series of actions to help us continue to serve our educational mission to the park. The facilitators of the session asked us to begin with a review of our accomplishments over the last five years, which our President Steve Medley outlined for us. We truly have done some great work for the park! I am proud to be a member of our association.
After a day of sitting in a conference room (albeit one on the seashore), we were treated to an interpretive walk at Point Lobos. Kimi Kodani Hill, one of our board members, brought her father Eugene Kodani, who had spent his childhood on Point Lobos. His memories of the area provided a wonderful complement to the walk; he pointed out the sites of the homesteads, and offered anecdotes about growing up near the abalone canneries.
On the last morning of our stay, I walked out to the beach at 7:00 am to observe a negative tide, when the water falls below the average water line. I felt like I had access to a hidden world, as areas that were usually hidden under water now lay exposed. Starfish and jellyfish lingered in the tide pools, while anxious birds dashed among the “new” rocks looking for treats.