Emma and Sharks

These two events were the highlights of the past couple of weeks. Terre, Wally and Emma came for a visit. For those that don’t know them they used to live a couple of doors down from us but have since moved to Ambleside. Nadia and Emma have been good friends since they we were very young and until this trip, would still see each other frequently. Emma was only told that the family was going on vacation to California. The expression on her face was truly priceless when she saw Nadia at the airport arrival. They originally planned to stay 3 nights but after one day here they decided to re-schedule the rest of their holidays and stay a full week. We went to Coronado Beach, La Jolla Beach, The Wild Animal Park, Ocean Beach not to mention several trips to the hotel pool. We decided to stay on at the Marriot Marina for a full month. It has full resort status with swimming pool, hydrotherapy pool, gymnasium, tennis courts, it’s embarrassing but you can even get room service to your boat. The kids really loved the beaches. They took turns surfing on Nadia’s board. It was the first time both of them “caught” a wave. It was hard to get them to stop. They found live sand dollars. They snorkeled and swam until they shivered. The animal park also went over really well. We didn’t get out of there until nearly 8 pm after arriving early in the day. There were a great many displays and activities, too many to do and see in one day. We had a small birthday party dinner for Nadia at Ocean Beach so that Emma and Nadia could celebrate together even if it was a couple of weeks early. We are really happy that they had a chance to visit us. A few days later, Dale was back with us for a couple of days. He met a delivery skipper in Crescent City on our way to San Francisco who offered Dale a crew position on a delivery from Hawaii to Oceanside CA. Always the adventurer he accepted and when he called us he had just returned from their ocean crossing from Hawaii. Check out his blog for more details. While he was here we went back to La Jolla Beach. The last time we were there with Emma the surf was quite high and the sand was stirred up so visibility was limited and the waves made it more difficult to snorkel. This time the ocean had settled out and we had a chance to swim with the big attraction, leopard sharks. Dozens of them in water 5 to 10 feet deep, so they were up nice and close. Everyone loved it. They are a docile species that come in to the sandy bottom bay to lay their egg casing this time every year. As the name suggests they are spotted. My fish guide indicates they grow to seven feet but most of the ones we saw were 4 to 5 feet. There were several other fish species but funny how they were overlooked. We then went for a drive up to the glider port just a couple miles north. There is a 400 foot cliff there that catches the Pacific onshore winds and makes for a natural place to fly gliders. Model gliders, hand gliders and para-gliders. I think everyone, including Nadia wanted to go for a ride. Today we went to Balboa Park, home of many museums, gardens, and the San Diego Zoo. We didn’t do much except look around the gardens and architecture. We are feeling a little burned out from all the activities of the past few weeks. Time for a short rest and we’ll be back at it shortly.

Pete