Project Ocean took me and Rod, director of photography, to Maryland’s Eastern Shore for a few days during a somewhat toasty early July. Lighthouses calling out into the sea. Little islands, big islands. The banging around of working docks where a community makes a living. Rocks. Colorful and inviting downtowns yards from the frigid North Atlantic. A haze keeping the watery horizon a beckoning mystery. A July sun warming the bones but not sweltering. Hidden gem bodies of water around every inland turn.

Project Ocean took me and Rod, director of photography, to Maryland’s Eastern Shore for a few days during a somewhat toasty early July. Our filming mission was with nonprofit Assateague Coastal Trust, an organization that was launched to safeguard Assateague Island from development, ultimately leading to its protective designations as a state and national park.

It was day 11 on the road, our last day of West Coast Project Ocean production. We awoke with five hours of sleep after a 22-hour day to film with our seventh and final nonprofit of the trip. We had crossed the country to film the first six organizations with five flights, seven hotel changes and who knows how many hours in the rental car.

Filming in California for the first week of June means we’re going to come back to Virginia with jealousy-inducing tans to last the rest of the year.

Project Ocean had us retracing our steps back to Santa Cruz near the end of our first week of West Coast production, this time to catch Save The Waves Coalition to film their first ever summit.

I’ve never seen a waterfall at the beach.  That is, until I was cruising across the murky (and I’m told rather sharky) waters of Drake’s Bay off the coast of middle/Northern California. 

As a former news reporter, I was taught never to bury the lead. This is not a food blog, but nevertheless, I must grace you with this headliner: A place exists in the world called Chocolate The Restaurant. It’s in Santa Cruz. Go. There is hope for us all.

When I saw this quote standing tall on a white and strategically lit column in the middle of a busy bird exhibit in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I knew it would make it into our Project Ocean film. I wasn’t exactly sure where or how it would appear, but I knew instinctively that it captured a vision for the film I had not yet found the words to describe.

Our director of photography, Rod, and I had settled in for our pre-shoot day routine of charging batteries and a nutritious (ish) dinner. Project Ocean had plucked us from the Virginia mountains, where the chill of spring at elevation still hung in the air, and benevolently dropped us down in a mildly breezy, salty aired San Diego.