Cruising the Cali Coast

I'm on my way from Monterey to Phoenix but being retired and enjoying good scenery, I'm taking four days to do the trip, going down the coast to Coronado before heading east.  At Big Sur on Tuesday the surf was up ahead of the oncoming storm, creating salt haze that shrouded the coast nicely.  Incidentially, the storm has reached Big Sur...today (Thursday Dec 11) the town was submerged by almost seven inches of rain in eight hours!

 

Mobs of birds cruising at the mouth of the Little Sur River.

 

The big ol' bull elephant seals have arrived at Pt Piedras Blancas and are busy staking out sections of beach.  The female sloats will come ashore next month and give birth...then in February the bulls that have staked out their turf will mate with the ladies...right around Valentines Day, appropriately.  This one is preening for all he's worth.

 

Pismo Beach surf at dusk.  Pier in the background.

 

Sunset turns the water molten.

 

I've always enjoyed the contractor marks observed while walking urban sidewalks.  This is the oldest one I've seen...the first one from the 19th century!  It's in Coronado, about a block from the Hotel Del, which opened a decade earlier.  These marks are scarce now...unlike this one, most are at corners and have been obliterated when the corners were rebuilt for handicap access...i.e. wheelchairs.  A necessary change, but it would be nice if the old logos had somehow been preserved.

 

Except around 7 AM and 3 PM when the Naval Air Station at North Island generates a rush hour, Coronado is a quiet, peaceful town of 25,000, with no aura of suburbia.  Except...at the end of many residential streets looms downtown San Diego, a mile across the bay from here.  To have such a peaceful town so close to the center of a major city is very unusual...only equivalents I can think of are the towns on Vashon and Bainbridge Islands near Seattle, and they're farther from the city than Coronado is from San Diego.

 

I used to live here!  When I was in the Navy I did a couple stints residing at this apartment complex, then called Oakwood...something different now.  It was very nice then...still looks great though it's over 40 years old.  I loafed by the pool, shot pool, played tennis, strolled around town...all good.  Certainly better than living aboard the ship with no windows and the constant hum of machinery! In 1974 a furnished studio here cost $230 a month...a large sum for an ensign, but worth every dime.  They still rent places by the month and I have been tempted to move back in for 30 days just to enjoy the area.

 

The Coronado bridge arcs gracefully toward San Diego.  It's a free ride now.  In the '70s it cost 60 cents each way, the equivalent of about three dollars now.  People on my ship...based in North Island...who lived halfway down San Diego Bay in Chula Vista drove clear around the southern end of the bay and up Silver Strand to avoid paying the toll.

 

Sunset in front of the Del this evening.  (I should say afternoon...the sunset is at about 445 PM these days).

 

Surf's up ahead of the incoming storm.