Nurse Janie’s Holiday Journal

By Scott Lackenby | Dated June 17, 2016

Hey Gang!! How are you all? It’s been an exciting week here at GVH. I FINALLY got a postcard from newly re-instated bestie Dr John, he came back to work on Wednesday AND we had cake to celebrate Nurse Janie’s birthday. It’s been pretty much the perfect week for this clinic cat!!

Speaking of Nurse Janie, as you know, she is not long back from an amazing North American holiday, and you’ve seen some of the spectacular pictures she took, but I thought you would all like to read a bit about some of the things she and her boyfriend Sam got up to. So I asked Nurse Janie to write me a little something about her holiday and here it is! It’s so good I didn’t even have to re-write it!

We started our trip with a visit to the Harbour Seal and Californian Sea Lion colonies on the coast of San Diego and a trip to San Diego zoo. Next up was our first whale watching trip of the holiday and we saw some Common and Pacific White Sided Dolphins and then along came two Blue Whales! On the first day!

We drove inland towards the desert and stopped at the California Wolf Center along the way and saw some beautiful wolves. We then headed to Joshua Tree National Park where we saw Kyotes and Humming Birds.

We then headed back into LA for an Iggy Pop concert and were back on the road again the next day. On the way up the coast we were lucky enough to see 8 of the 200 Californian Condors that are living in the wild! We also spotted a Grey Whale mother and calf feeding in a bay at Big Sur.

We stopped by at a beach in San Simeon where there were over 1500 Elephant Seals! They were very noisy!

After stopping by the amazing Monterey Bay Aquarium we headed up to San Francisco and visited Alcatraz and pier 39 which is home to a large colony of Californian Sea Lions who have completely taken over 🙂

Next, it was inland to Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks where we saw Deer and Rattle Snakes and some of the largest trees in the world!

On Vancouver Island we saw more Harbour Seals and out on the water we watched a pod of transient Orcas travel along the coast line together. There was a whole family, including a tiny baby.

Next we flew to Florida and the first stop was NASA. The next morning had to wake up at 3am to drive to Crystal River Springs, but it was worth it because we went swimming with wild Manatees! They were so much bigger than I was expecting and were very loud eaters. We were even lucky enough to see a week old calf feeding from mum!!

We visited some of the theme parks in Florida for the next 7 days so we really were exhausted when the time came to head back home to Australia. It was a wonderful holiday and we really hope to head back again one day.

How amazing was that?!? And the pics are stunning. Nurse Janie certainly is talented. Well, better go, I think there may be birthday cake left. Meows for now, love Joey xoxo