Friday Dec 18th we left our condo in Cathedral City at 9:00 am for the 110 mile drive to Homewood Suites in San Diego.
We made a few stops, Diamond Valley Lake is huge! $11 to hike and park. Beautiful day to hike and bird.
We arrived at our hotel at 2:20, 1st floor, 1 bedroom suite. We will be here for 8 nights.
Sea Lions with babies!
We spent most of the day at Mission Bay area. We spent a few hours at Miramar Reservoir pretty close to our hotel in the afternoon.
Sunday was whale watching day! We headed to the wharf early, our departure time was 9:30. Walked around that beautiful city
A bit cool on the boat but not too bad as the temp was about 75!
Our ride...
It was exciting to see and hear and F15 do a fly by
A nuclear submarine getting a few repairs
We did not see any whales but a few dauphins and a few birds. Our main goal was birds, the rest of the 30 customers on board were looking for whales. Since we did not see any whales we received a voucher for another trip.
A nice evening to have a fire pit right outside of our door!
Monday we headed to point Loma to the Cabrillo National Monument but... it doesn't open until 9:00 and we arrived at 7:30. What to do? Why walk around the cemetery and road until 9:00!
Did find a whale!!!
Off to Mission Bay for lunch
Christmas Star on the shortest day of the year. Jupiter and Saturn very close together. We tried to get pictures with the scope. We are not practiced in getting pictures but we could clearly see the moons and rings through the scope.
Wednesday: went to a couple of local parks before our appointment at Best Buy to get a new battery for Eric's phone. We managed to get a new life bird and a few year birds! The morning began a bit chilly and cloudy. The afternoon's temp went up to 65 but the clouds remained.
Thursday we headed to La Jolla to look for the first Whispering Giant by Peter Toth. the first sculpture was actually carved in the cliffs in 1972. Weather and earthquakes etc have changed the landscape so that the carving is no longer there. Well we (I) did not look up all the information until after we were looking for about an hour. Needless to say we seen many faces and animals in the cliffs. We felt the presence of the Giant.
We thought this was it.. but NO
Maybe somewhere in these?
The day was cloudy but warm.
Our luck has changed! We finally found the McCown's longspur! New Life bird! #620 in the U.S. Its harder and harder to find Life birds but we still have a few to get. The hunt is usually fun and gets us outside.
She is right in the middle of this pic
Zoom in...
Merry Christmas Our final day in San Diego.
off to La Jolla for a walk around
this gull was trying to figure out what I was looking at. I was trying to figure out what he was looking at!
We had a great time here in San Diego although not too much was open. Off to Yuma on Dec 26 for 4 nights
San Diego is a beautiful city and very entertaining. Too bad it wasn’t completely open. ❤️❤️
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