Return to the Tidepools

During the month of November, the extreme low tide in San Diego coincides with late afternoon - a great time to visit the tidepools, since they close at dusk (as in, there are police cars that blast their alarms and flash their lights to say "you'd better get the heck out of here asap").

On November 30, Nick and I made a quick jaunt out to the tidepools at Cabrillo National Monument for sunset. The marine layer was rolling and it quickly turned to pea-soup fog. But there was something about the quality of the light that late in the afternoon on the orange cliffs that was really striking, and I definitely enjoyed taking pictures of our long shadows!





We headed in the opposite direction from my last trip there with Mom and Dad - this was possible because the tide was extremely low (-1.4). There was a well-marked path (bordered by the stones) that took us up and over a ridge and gave us different views of the high cliffs.





looking up:


Nick pics:



I just love this picture of Nick. It makes me so happy every time I see it!



If you compare this shot up the coastline to a similar shot from my prior tidepools blog post, you can see that we are at a very different angle here, up on the cliff instead of down at water level.


If you look closely, you can see an egret in the water. In fact, she/he's almost in exactly the same place as the one that popped up in my last visit! It's hard to believe that it's the same bird, but ...




Here's the little guy, shaking off the water. You can see the droplets being flung from his head!


post-shake:


Talking with Nick about this next shot, he commented that it's hard to get a sense of scale; he thought these rocks looked bigger than they actually were because of how fine and delicate the texture in the rock was. In actuality, this rock protrusion was probably about 5 feet tall.


I just really love the smoothness of the rock here:


We caught the beginning of sunset just as we were being "persuaded" by the police sirens to leave:


And then we headed up to Cabrillo monument to catch the very last of the light. The fog was rolling in and it was verrrry thick, but it diffused the light and created a beautiful palette of pinks and purples over the fogged-in city. Here are a couple shots of the Cabrillo statue in those beautiful colors:



At the bottom of this last shot, you can barely make out the edge of North Island (Coronado) and the channel leading into San Diego bay (the horizontal line at the bottom).

Despite the fact that it was cold, super windy, and my lens practically salted over from the ocean spray being driven into us by the wind, it was beautiful and we were glad we got to do it together - maybe our last tidepooling trip before we leave San Diego!