The beach front camping we had was at high tide in the morning so no beach to play on. awe drove a few miles south to find a beach to play on for a bit. I just laid on a tick and enjoyed the sun.
My eyes are itchy. I don’t know what’s going on but the skin around my eyes are a little swollen and feel irritated.
Joshua Tree National Park. 18th National Park.
Joshua Tree visitor center and then to Belle campground. We have an awesome private spot in some boulders.
Edwin and Vera woke up early to go crabbing on the beach.
No feesh 🙁 but it was a nice beach.
Anytime we drive near Santa Barbara Edwin always talks about stopping at P soup Anderson’s. We never do but we figured this time we were
we got into Ventura and went to Cannel Islands visitor Center. We wanted to make it out to channel Islands but this is where our lack of planning hit a bump. There are limited boats going out this time of year and they are doing construction on the two close by Islands so no trips in the next few days. bummer. there is a kayaking trip on Saturday that we’d love to go to but people are talking to saying it’s too iffy this time of year with weather and it’s not necessarily worth it. We may have to come back in the summer time next year to do a trip.
Channel Islands National Park. 17th National Park. Well we’re counting it as it so far.
My parents lived in Ventura right before I was born for about five years. Are used to go down there and visit and I still remember coming here as a kid. The girls were pretty upset that my mom and dad had moved. They look around the neighborhood and think they would love to live here.
Daisy walking the plank
I decided to finish tonight with the round of minigolf. Even with my impressive hole in one on the first three puts. Isabella eeked out a win in the end.
We woke up to walk out to the beach and see if any elephant seals were out, but only piles of kelp and a few fisherman.
I wasn’t that excited about going on the tour, as I was antsy to get down to Ventura. But it was quite beautiful up there. It was really fun imagining being there for a formal gathering dressed to the 9s. The outdoor pool was so inviting I had to tell myself “no” it is not worth getting it kicked out for to just a dive in once…at least not with the kids in tow 😉
So it ended up being more fun than I thought it would be.
merry xmas
When we got back to the RV and had lunch we drove up the few miles to the elephant seals beach.
Such cute little giant fat things they are. Its not hard to sit there for a long time just watching them asleep while occasionally scratching themselves, opening their eyes to look at you or simply rearranging and moving directly on top of one their neighbors. We even got to see a mom with her 6 day old pup.
Pups usually weigh about 30 to 40 pounds at birth. The mother stays with them for 30 days nursing them. At the end of the 30 days the pub weighs about 300 pounds. The Mom transfers 1/3 of her bodyweight to her pup. All this while she’s fasting.
At the end of the 30 days the mom mates with the alpha and returns to the sea. Interestingly there is delayed “implantation” of the baby or “blastocyst”. This helps ensure that the mother is able to regain her fat before she cares for another offspring and that the baby will be born the following year when the mom goes to shore during the winter birthing/mating season. Otherwise they are out to sea. Females return one other time of year to molt in April and males do as well in May.
When the elephant seals return to sea males and females go in different directions. Males go up along the coast all the way to Alaska. Females tend to go directly west into the middle of the ocean.
Data shows that females typically do three dives in an hour going all the way down to about 2500 feet on average looking for food. Once a day they take an hour long dive and go all the way down to 4500 – 6000 feet below sea level. It is thought that perhaps they sleep during the descent.
Elephant seals have the most amount of hemoglobin for any mammal. Another interesting fact from scientific data is that when returning to the surface elephant seals O2 levels can be as low as 5%. To put this in perspective humans once they get below 92% it is considered low.
Then we drove down in Morro Bay and camped at Montaña de Oro state park on the beach.
At mass I met Una Gilmartin who is a civil engineer and is contracted out to the US National Park Service and was trying to convince me to get my PhD and become a park superintendent. hmmm… something to think about.
We decided to use the bad weather still today to drive south so we could be somewhere by the sunshine Monday morning.
We camped at San Simeon State Park. Edwin and I went for a walk out to the beach at night and it was really funny because in the moonlight you could see these large jumps on the beach. At first Edwin thought they could’ve been elephant seals., but as we got closer just noticed they were giant mounds of kelp. Then I got completely freaked out because as we were walking through the kelp there actually was a giant elephant seal in amongst the kelp that in turn got scared of us.
It was nice to not have an agenda and somewhere to get off to so we enjoyed hanging out in our pjs in the xmas lights making a big breakfast.
I think my favorite part of bringing mom in the trip is…she’s not a 75 year old woman but one of the kids 🙂
morning view
It was a beautiful day, the sun was out so we walked to lower Yosemite Falls. it was just me my mom and the girls because… Surprisingly… The slide out broke again so Edwin was going to stay behind to try and fix it
After being at the Awahanee for last nights I had not stopped thinking about french onion soup so we met Edwin there for lunch. Yummy. And I’m pretty sure our server was Edna from the Incredibles.
After lunch we went to look up in awe at El Capitan.
You are one crazy mofo Alex Honnold
A stop at tunnel view.
too much movement from these knuckleheads
We headed back through the valley and the girls finished up their junior ranger packets at the visitor center.
We were heading back to camp when Edwin and I decided that instead of staying here the night, dropping off my mom on a train in Fresno, and continuing on to Sequoia and King’s Canyon National Park, that we’d head back to Oalland tonight, avoid the storm coming in, hang out in Oakland for the day while Edwin fixed the slide out. So we turned around and headed home.
Woohoo! Day 💯 We made it. And not to shabby of a place to spend it.
We knew we had 2 good days of weather before the storm was coming back so we decided to do our big hike today.
The goal was the top of Nevada Falls. The mist trail is closed in winter so it was the first time I’ve used the John Muir Trail to get to the top. But hiking up to the falls brings back lots of memories. We used to come to Yosemite every summer and camp with a few other Corpus families. We spent lots of family time here. It’s nice to have my mom back on the trail and keep her hiking.
Mom turned around at this point which was probably equivalent to getting up to Vernal Falls, but we couldn’t see it, again because we were on the John Muir a trail instead of the Mist Trail. Snow/ice started on the trail so it was time for mom to turn around, but she’s pretty neat that she can still miles uphill!! We brought our crampons we bought in Bryce so we were good to go.
The unfortunate part of my mom turning around was only a few switchbacks later we caught a view of Nevada Falls.
Another little over a mile more and we made it up the top.
looks like a fun water slide.
By the time we walked back to RV it ended up being an 8 mile hike. Longer than I predicted with the additional mileage of the John Muir Trail and walking from and back to the campground. We had tired feet. Only 1/2 of the half dome trip.
We rested at home for a bit before we went to our nightly vigil at the Awahanee fireplace. There ended up being “storytelling” this evening.
Bobcat was here again tonight. We met him last night warming by the fire, this morning walking around. And again here. We are now friends.
It seemed to take a long time to drive there but we weren’t in a rush to get there with too much sunlight bc it was raining all day again.
But we got there with enough time to go to the Awahanee and enjoy the fireplace.
Mom is always unsure on the first day of traveling with us…but thankfully Edwin spotted some chocolate covered orange slices and my mom was immediately in a better mood.
happy mami with chocolate covered orange slices and rum tea
None of us had seen Free Solo so we thought tonight was a perfect night to watch it. Even though I knew he was successful it was still nerve wracking to watch.
