Seals on the Beach

Street of San Francisco

Alcatraz

A San Francisco Treat

Good Morning All! (Well, for those of you in EST, Good Afternoon!) The days seem a little less exciting when I don’t have bear stories to share with you, but there will be wildlife in this one, so read on. Yesterday we left Eureka for our little jaunt down the Pacific Coast. It really is a gorgeous drive if you ever have the time (or the stomach) for it. For much of the way you can see the coastline and waves breaking over the offshore rocks. That was probably the coolest thing for me. It’s sort of surreal because while you watch the waves rise and fall, they look rather calm, especially from a distance. However, when one of these “calm” forces meets a rock, it’s like a collision of energy and they spray water up in the air and even away from the beach, you can imagine the magnificent sound that they create.

The other pretty amazing thing is what a great ocean view the cows in pasture have in California. So much of the land on the north coast is undeveloped but I didn’t really comprehend what that means. Apparently it means that cow pastures go right up to the edge of the sea. We did see quite a few bits of land for sale, so get out your pocketbook if you’d like to claim your own oceanfront property. The drive to get to the coast from the 101 was very, very, very curvy. Did I mention it was curvy? You have to cross the coastal mountains that lay between 101 and 1 and the resulting road is a test for drivers’ nerves and passengers’ stomachs. My stomach barely passed. The long stretches where I could see the beach once we were on 1 wasn’t too bad, but Tom really seemed to push it to the limit at the end as we neared the city. At one point we actually had to pull over. So before you buy up that aforementioned property, I’d check out the commute once or twice.

And now, as promised, the wildlife portion of today’s program: Pelicans and Sea Lions (or Seals, we’re not sure which.) As we drove down the 1 we pulled out to see what little critters lay on the beach below and boy were we in for a surprise. The entire finger of beach that stretched across between the ocean and some little inlet was covered in animals. They were very orderly in who got what space. The seals (we’ll just call them that for now) ringed the outer edge to be closest to the water. Every now and then we’d see one shimmy down off of the beach and the transformation from a lumbering beast to a graceful something (words are escaping me for an appropriate opposite to “beast”) in the water was amazing. On the inner layer of the circle were the pelicans and further down the beach, where the “C” of animals ended were the lowly sea gulls. Once again, we get to check another animal off of the list of things to see, even if we’re not sure if they were sea lions or seals.

We drove over the Golden Gate in San Francisco and were lucky that as of our arrival the fog hadn’t rolled in yet (that happened about 10 minutes later) so we had a clear view of the city and bridge. We stopped by Fisherman’s Wharf (wanted to see the touristy stuff, plus there were views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate across the water) and then headed up to Holly’s house. We’d been craving some pasta so we went out to a little place called Val’s. The pasta was good but we opted to not stick around for karaoke at the lounge next door. The best part about Holly’s place (other than the kick-ass view over the city)? The dogs!! She’s got two black lab mixes and it was a welcome sight to not only see a face from home but a couple of furry, four-legged faces as well.

Today we’re off to Yosemite for a few days. It’s unfortunate how the timing worked out because it’s Friday and the park will be absolutely packed with people. Hopefully the crowd won’t diminish too much from our experience.

PS-Almost forgot, we got a chance (inadvertently while leaving Fisherman’s Wharf) to drive down a couple of those very steep streets that you think of when you think San Francisco. Crazy!
PPS-We had an earthquake this morning! It was a 4.2 across the bay in Oakland early this morning. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to feel it (or maybe that’s fortunate), either way I can say that we also experience an earthquake on our trip!