Welcome to California

Well it only took me 9 days but I finally arrived in the great state of California.  Not Monterey, but San Diego to visit my buddy Mike from college and his fiancé Sara.  Almost didn't get through the desert though!  Mojave let's put a couple more gas stations in what do you think?  About 100 miles with no stations and I coasted in on fumes to the one and only Dairy Queen gas station in Ludlow, CA.  It is here that I met the 2nd person from Maine...in the middle of the friggin desert!  I still had my Sox shirt/hat so the guy working at Dairy Queen asked where I was from and it ends up he was from Portland and had also lived in Boston.  How does a guy from Portland, ME end up at a Dairy Queen in the middle of the Mojave Desert???  The things I wish I had asked!

Anyway, I made it through the desert and was psyched to finally be getting close to San Diego.  I knew it was still hours from Monterey but I could have cared less at this point.  I knew it was going to be a few days to catch up, relax, and not have to be in my car.  Sara is amazing and had dinner ready when I got through the door.  Home cooked food, a comfy bed, good company; it was a great feeling.  Mike was working through till Sunday morning (on duty in the USCG) and would be home at 8am on Sunday.  Sara and I hung out with their neighbors, all Navy guys that were pretty cool.  I learned that I'm one of two people in this alleyway that can throw a NERF football over a wall from 30 yards??? and that I'm also way too old to be trying to ride a two-wheeled skateboard.  I just don't have the wiggle!

Sunday was a day of very disappointing football.  It started off to be a great day.  We went to a Patriots bar to watch the game and it was going very well up until the second half.  I guess the defense doesn't have to show up for this part of the game.  Mr. Kraft should double check their contracts to make sure they start playing 60 minutes of football.  So after they lost to the J-E-T-S...suck, suck, suck I was in a very bad mood.  We headed down to the beach after that and watched people try to surf in a wave machine so seeing people wipe out and get tossed by the waves put me in a better mood.  The rest of the day was filled with football and food!  Sara is a great cook and was stuffing me full of apps and meals, it was great.

Can you see the fish next to the anemone?

Monday was the most fun I had on my trip.  We went down to Horton plaza to check out the outdoor mall which was pretty cool, then grabbed some lunch and headed to La Jolla to check out the seals, sea lions and do some tide pooling.  First we headed to the part of the beach where the seals hang out and walked out on the jetty.   We then headed up the road to check out the tide pools.  I love rocky intertidals.  There is so much life!  And I of course have a lot of new animals to learn.  We saw a bunch of shore crabs, green anemones, some juvenile fishes, limpets, chitons, barnacles...all sorts of cool species!

We kept heading up the road and eventually passed a ledge with hundreds of birds on it; pelicans, gulls, and cormorants.  Well when you put hundreds of birds on one rock it starts to smell pretty bad!  It was gross and if you've ever worked with birds or been around a large number of them you know how it can get.  Just passed the birds were some sea lions and some caves to check out.  The big cave costs to go down into it so we passed on that one but played around in the other ones.  After playing around for a couple of hours our stomachs were yelling at us again so it was time to go home, eat, and watch Monday Night Football.

Tuesday was pretty chill in the morning.  Mike was working so we waited until he got out, picked him up and headed to the Birch Aquarium.  Shown around by an old friend, we were able to get behind the scenes and were lead around by one of the aquarists that works with jellies.  It was definitely a very small aquarium, larger than I had expected though and is run in conjunction with Scripps Institute of Oceanography.  The exhibits were nice for a small aquarium (although the jellies looked a bit rough) so it was cool to check it out.  We all went out for a few drinks that night for a fitting end to my San Diego trip.  I headed out around 8 Wednesday morning and finally headed to Monterey!