La Jolla--Our Favorite Beach Town

On our third day touring the San Diego area, we headed up the coast to our north. Instead of the faster route along Interstate 15, we'll always opt for the more scenic and slower route. That took us up a steep residential street right past Mount Soledad. This is home to a very nice veterans' memorial, and we loved the silhouette of that white cross against a brilliant blue sky this morning.

From here we could look over the San Diego valley. We could see jagged green slopes beneath us. But every flattened plateau was absolutely covered with houses for as far as the eye could see.

In the other direction is the Pacific Ocean, and that's where we are headed today. 

One of the areas that was highest on our list of places to visit in San Diego, was the town to our north--La Jolla. Denisa is getting better at her Spanish pronunciations, and she now knows that "J" is pronounced as "H," and "LL" becomes the English "Y". So if she pretends that the town is spelled La Hoya, she can pronounce it right every time. We snagged a place to park at Kennedy park and got our first glimpse of the beach at La Jolla. With temperatures in the low 70's and the ocean breezes, we're both wearing long pants and long sleeves this day.

We're here because we've read that this is a great beach to launch a kayak for a ride in the ocean. Sure enough, we watch as people from the local kayak place are helping their customers launch their kayaks. If you rent from La Jolla Kayak, they carry your boat out to the water for you.

Then they hold the kayak steady while you get in the boat. Then they push you through the incoming waves until you are safely on the other side of the wave line in the open ocean. Nice service!

Since we were planning to use our new inflatable Sea Eagle kayak, we knew we would have to launch ourselves without all that help. So we watched carefully as the kayak tour guide paddled himself through those stiff waves one after the other. It was quite a white water ride!

Denisa was a little apprehensive about this kayak ride, as we had never paddled through waves like this. We also recognized that getting a longer kayak with two people aboard was going to be trickier than the single kayak that the professional kayaker just launched by himself. We have no pictures because we were obviously too busy paddling and too wet to take photos. Let's just say it wasn't pretty, and we had to make two attempts before we got all the way through the waves. The front person in the kayak (Denisa) gets soaked as the wave hits the bough and propels it straight in the air. There was no water under Denisa's paddles until the kayak slammed back down on the other side of the wave. Then we were already meeting the next wave! All this time we are paddling as hard as possible to move forward, while the force of the waves is propelling us backwards.

But we finally made it through the waves, and we found ourselves bobbing in the gentle swells. The Pacific ocean temperature was about 65 degrees, and we were both soaked. But we were working so hard that we weren't really cold. We spent some time bailing the water out of the boat, and then we were on our way to the sea caves on the far shore line.

We caught up with two different kayak tour groups that had left the shore long before us. But it was interesting to see where the $79 tours take their customers.

From the side, we could see the sea caves that have been formed into the side of the sea wall.

We could see light through this cave entrance in the middle of the picture.

Our next paddling destination was to the rock where the sea lions sun themselves. As we got closer, some of the swimming sea lions came out to greet us.

By this time, we were joined by a fellow traveler who had just rented a kayak instead of going on a tour. His rental company insisted he would get too wet to take a camera in the kayak. We would have to agree, but we kept ours in a dry bag. True to its name, it kept the camera dry when everything else was soaked. So we took some pictures of the sea lions swimming around his kayak, and emailed them to him later.

We headed further from the shore, and it was so much fun to find more marine life around us. At one time we had a couple sea lions swimming to our left, while dolphins were breaking the water in front of us. We were certainly glad we defeated those waves to make this kayak trip!

We had several pelicans and gulls around us as well. They were enjoying the fishing around the kelp forest we had paddled into. Giant kelp stays anchored to the ocean floor, and can grow a foot each day to eventually make it to the surface of the water.

We are proud of the job that our new Sea Eagle kayak is doing in its maiden ocean voyage. It can float up to 635 pounds, and we put it to the test with the weight of a whole load of water onboard today.

At this point, we have been paddling in the ocean for almost two hours. As we look back to our shore, we have to be on top of a swell to even see the large hotel where we launched. It's hard to tell distances across the water, but we have definitely paddled further than we thought we would chasing those sea lions and dolphins.

We had just put the camera away in the dry bag, when another sea lion swam right up to the side of the boat and posed. We joked that they could sense when we didn't have the camera ready, and that's when they came the closest. They seemed to be as curious about us, as we are of them. By the time Denisa got the camera back out, this was the last picture we got. It was such a thrill to be so close to these wild creatures in their very wild habitat.

The trip back to the shore was definitely easier. It was great to have the waves working with us, instead of against us this time. We glided back to the sand, and jumped out before we were dumped in the surf. It was one of the best kayak trips ever!

As we were getting out, some scuba divers were going into the ocean. The water is really clear here in La Jolla, and we heard there can be good sightings under the water as well.

After deflating the kayak and loading it back into the car, we took a hike down the La Jolla board walk. One of the most interesting sections of beach was taken by a large group of harbor seals lying prostrate on the sand.

We could watch them from the board walk, or could circle to the ocean side on a rock walkway. Of course, we did both.

It was definitely nap time for most of the group, as they were lying limp on the sand. It is obviously spring, as we counted four different mothers and their pups napping together in just this little group.

As we watched, a mother seal arrived with her baby. We could see the umbilical cord was still fresh, and our reading later confirmed that this pup must be less than four days old.

He was definitely smaller than the other pups. These harbor seals are so graceful in the water, but look so clumsy on land. This little guy was really struggling to make his way out of the water. We're wondering if this was his maiden voyage up the beach.

When he finally made it up the beach, the first order of business was getting some nourishment. It took a bit of searching, but the pup finally found what he was looking for.

There were plenty of other harbor seal antics going on at the beach, but Denisa kept going back to the littlest pup of the group. After he was full, the Mother and child had some sweet time together in the sand. There was some good Mother/pup bonding time on the beach.

Denisa had so much fun watching the harbor seals, that it was hard to leave them. But we had other beaches and other animals to see.

There were also birds enjoying the La Jolla beaches. This was a black cormorant, drying his wings in the sunshine.

We also enjoyed watching this pelican, sunning himself on the rocks.

But our favorites were the Brandt's cormorants, sitting close enough to the board walk that we could see their bright blue necks.

In fact, we were close enough to see that their eyes were about the same color of blue.

After all these bird sightings, it was time to find another popular beach in La Jolla. This was the same rock beach that we had kayaked to earlier. We knew we were close when we saw the crowds on the rocks.

When you have this many sea lions together, you can also smell them before you can see them. Unlike the harbor seals that find their own special place on the sand, the sea lions seem to like lyng in piles together.

Even though seals and sea lions look very much alike, they have some marked differences. One of them is that these sea lions have front flippers that can hold them up in that classic sea lion pose.

Another difference is that sea lions have ear flaps that can be seen on the side of their heads.

Sometimes those ears can itch so that only a little flipper scratching will help it.

There were two sea lions that were raising a ruckus, barking and chasing each other across the rocks. We weren't sure if this was fighting or courting, but it was certainly interesting.

We had timed our visit so that we could be at the beach during low tide. That's when the water recedes the farthest to expose the ocean floor.

In the pockets of water left in the rocky pools, we can see a microcosm of marine life up close and in miniature. Just hours before, the place that Denisa is standing was covered by several feet of ocean water.

Now we could find anemones clearly with only a couple inches of salt water over them. When they had no water, they closed up to conserve moisture until the tide waters returned.

We also found these curious-looking goose-necked barnacles. These are filter feeders that eat tiny marine organisms that the currents bring to them.

These California mussels are also filter-feeders, and completely covered this large rock.

If you don't mind getting splashed with an occasional rogue wave, looking at the deeper tide pools is like looking at your own personal salt-water aquarium.

Denisa finally got tired of the tide pools, and concentrated on sea shells on the sand.  Since we have been hanging out on the beaches of southern California for the last few days, we have found almost no shells. Today we found a few tiny snails for our best-shells-of-the-day picture.

The sun was setting as we left La Jolla for the trip back to the motor home. We had perfect weather today, and we have to say our day here was one of the most fun ever. We had been blessed with encounters with marine animals and beautiful sea scapes, as we wandered into His wonders again.