Vacation 2009 - Day 10

My Birthday

Today was all about my special day. I was the center of attention all day. Everyone showered me with good wishes and presents.

Okay, that's not really true. Today was about Parks, both the state and national.

After a quick breakfast of doughnuts (complete with a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday") we headed off to Cabrillo National Monument. Juan Roderiguez Cabrillo was the first European to reach this area. Only so much is known about him. He was likely Portugese, but made his fortune in Guatemala. He was given command of a couple ships and told to claim more land for Spain, look for gold, and look for a supposed channel between the Atlantic and Pacific. He did find land, which he named San Miguel. (A later explorer, Vizcaíno, renamed it San Diego, in spite of orders to maintain earlier namings.) He later died somewhere in the channel islands from an infection. A nice exhibit talked about his ship and route. There was real chainmail the Things could try on, and the ranger let them hold a replica sword.



This park is at the tip of Point Loma Peninsula, so it was and is the perfect location for a lighthouse. The exhibit at the lighthouse focused on the Israel family that lived there from - . The house was open, but the tower was closed, so we looked at the fresnel lenses in the assistant lighthouse keeper's house. The lenses are beautiful, lots of prism-like cuts designed to reflect all the light from the lamp out horizontally. The original lamp was 159 candlepower and could be seen up to 39 miles away.



The area was used by the military from the late 1800's to control the bay. Thing 1 liked the military history exhibit. It showed a shell from a 16-inch gun, and talked about how the range of the 16-in guns was 25 miles. It also said that the lighthouse was used as a signaling station; incoming ships had to send the correct signal or they would be shelled.

Cabrillo NM is also very well known for tidepools, so we also visited the rocky shoreline. We were there at highest tide, however, so there weren't really any tidepools to see. We did manage to see limpets, chitons, crabs, anemones, periwinkles, and gooseneck barnacles. We also looked at seaweeds: kelp, sea lettuce, sea grass and feather boa kelp. Sweetie really wants to come back in the winter when the tides are lower.



The Things got another Jr Ranger Badge:



After lunch, we drove across the Coronado Bay Bridge, which had great views of the shipyards where many Navy ships were being worked on, and into the traffic of Coronado. Being Saturday, it took us a while to work our way down 75 to Imperial Beach. Then we stopped at Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve. This was our birding stop. We took a short hike down to where the Tijuana river meets the ocean. There were many shorebirds there: brown pelicans, double-crested cormorants, a great egret, Caspian terns, black skimmers (very cool), willets, whimbrels, long-billed curlews (very cool), marbled godwits, and a bunch of smaller sandpipers. Sweetie saw a red knot. We think we saw an osprey sitting in the background. On the walk to the estuary, we saw meadowlarks, common yellowthroats, house finches, and a Northern Harrier. We had to double-time it back to the Visitors' Center because it was getting late and they locked the gates at 5pm (Thing 2 did not appreciate this hurrying at the end of a long and tiring vacation). Sweetie was pretty pleased with the birding, but lamented our lack of a spotting scope. She wants to return in the winter.

And then we all got haircuts and took dancing lessons.




And that was it. Vacation was over, save for the drive north (which was uneventful). We hit traffic on the 405 (shocking, I know), but still made it back to San Pedro by 7:30. Our whole vacation consumed less than two tanks of gas. Tomorrow we go back to the island. A successful vacation - there's lots of tears tonight.