WEST COAST ADVENTURE - DAY (2 of 9)

WOKEN BY A DUCK – July 12

I was woken this morning by the implausible sound of a quacking duck. Isaac is taking the contract to heart and set his phone alarm to rouse himself via quack this morning. This, along with a lovely breakfast on the hotel terrace was a great way to start our day.

We drove to Crystal Cove State Park for our initial interaction with the rolling surf and the misty morning beach.  Our early California morning jaunts through the dunes often began with a cool salty fog which soon transformed into a sunny treasure-trove of marine and plant life to discover.  This transition would come to hallmark most of our beach ventures on this trip. 

The fleshy-leafed plants, coastal sage scrub and flowering succulents along the seaside pathways were plentiful.  I had no idea that beach life included a squirrel population until the first scraggy ground squirrels nearly tripped me by racing across my path and into their holes in the sand.  Some of the open spaces nearby are home to coyotes, mountain lions and roadrunners and though I have a sentimental attachment to the roadrunner made famous by the cartoon version (who in the face of repeated attempts was never defeated with Wylie Coyote’s Acme-manufactured dynamite), I was admittedly thankful that squirrels were the only mammals encountered on our first morning. As the daybreak mist lifted, beautiful views of the Pacific were evident. 

Troops of pelicans flying in formation soared above us and out over the water.  Tide pools filled with all manner of sea life were as common as puddles on a rainy day back home. 

Impressive seaweed clumps were attracting a few too many sand flies to the party, making sections of the sand bear an unsettling resemblance to a poppy seed roll.

Isaac attempted to rescue some black canvas shoes from a seaweed knot but after finally extricating them, they were blessedly too large for his feet.  I, for one, was thankful.  Aubrey’s acquisition of a recently deceased starfish on our last trip to the West Coast caused a smelly drive which I didn’t care to repeat for a pair of shipwrecked shoes.

We drove on to San Clemente and were thrilled to discover some tenacious surfers trying to tame the waves just off the pier.

One daredevil in horrendous dreadlocks immediately captivated my daughter with his stunts and his mane.

 After walking the length of the surprisingly long pier, we walked up the street into town and visited some shops, one of the best being San Clemente Chocolates, where Aubrey found a chocolate covered banana. 

Had lunch at Avila’s El Ranchito Mexican Restaurant and it was delicious but huge. 

We were back on the road and Isaac noted that “things were looking pretty Spanish.”  It was evident that this beautiful state was heavily influenced by both the Spanish colonial period and the Mexican periods in state history. And what became abundantly clear as we drove south on the Pacific Coast Highway, is that Jim should have paid more attention to Senora Moyer in high school.  (Let’s just say he spent an inordinate amount of time in the back row humming the Wicked Witch of the West tune from Wizard of Oz when he should have been conjugating his Spanish verbs and learning his vocabulary..) He was at a complete loss for correctly pronouncing the names of the towns, street names, and most of the other words on the signs. So in true Jim fashion, he totally made it up as he went along.  This amusing trend persisted for the entire trip up the coast. 

Our next stop was the San Diego Zoo.  We visited the adorable koala bears, the orangutans (my favorite) and the polar bears. 

We were entertained by the startle reflex of two monkeys innocently sipping water on the side of a man-made stream when the large rock (or in this case the pygmy hippo) lifted his shiny massive head to see what was causing the stir in the water.  The monkeys jumped as though shocked by electricity.  Some really impressive leaps.

We were nearly as shocked to run into Jim’s sister Nancy and brother-in-law Don by the capuchin monkey cages.  The probability of seeing them in California….in San Diego….at the zoo…and exactly in front of the monkey cages is just about nil.  They live about 20 miles from our house.  Much as I adore them both, when you consider that about 5 million people visit the San Diego Zoo each year and the chances of finding someone you are actually LOOKING for are pretty slim, it was a little creepy!   Photo is of Isaac and his Uncle Don. It really is a small world.