You could wish for snow in Phoenix, but it’s not happening. The cacti are perpetually green, not turning yellow and red as the fall gives way to winter. Sure, every store, shop, office, and parking lot blares the sounds of Christmas at us from the day after Halloween forward, but the smells and most common sights are missing. To make up for this, some people in Arizona go out of their way to have the most extraordinary light shows. This one is a bit conservative, but I liked it. Matter of fact, these understated displays with luminaria and lit-up saguaros really grow on you.
San Diego
Drove out to Los Angeles yesterday to visit my father and hang out in Ontario, but today is all ours. We’ve driven down to San Diego for some ocean time.
The fountain in front of the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography is beautiful, and this is just one small part of it.
Once inside, though, it was obvious that we’d been spoiled by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a rock star among aquariums.
We did enjoy seeing the baby shark in its casing so there was that.
Back out to the ocean to see what we wanted to do next.
It was kind of crazy watching surfers launch themselves into the pounding surf, hoping to have enough forward momentum that they wouldn’t be thrown back onto the rocks. Surfers are a bit nuts anyway.
It seemed natural to just stay along the coast and drive out on Point Loma and the Cabrillo National Monument.
This monument is for Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who in 1542 was the first European to step foot on what would become California: so who was the first-ever Native American to do so?
The Point Loma Lighthouse is an old reminder of an age gone by.
Original Pantry Cafe in L.A.
Poor photography habits and inattention to detail produced this blurry photo, but there’s the other sad part of the story: we took no other photos the day we returned to Arizona. That’s our friend Mark Shimer having breakfast with us at the Original Pantry Cafe in downtown Los Angeles.