Roadwarners

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.

The sunset was amazing. Beautiful.

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.

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.

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.

Went and bought my mom a Christmas tree and saw 1/2 of Corpus at the boy scout tree lot.

Girls went to Magyar iskola with my dad.

Then we decorated moms 🎄 Christmas tree.