Good Morning Good morning!
Now I know I haven't gotten around to actually making any posts about my recent London trip, but in my defense! -I got home 3 days ago and all three of those days have been spent fighting the demon known as Jet-Lag
Today's demon battle was lost when i woke up at 3AM and was completely unable to actually get back to sleep again. So after a few hours of sitting in bed contemplating existence I decided to just get up, get medicated, and get my fix now that I'm back in California.
And by get my fix of course I mean move my existence contemplation out of my bed and instead to staring at the ocean.
Timing was perfect at least. I rolled up and parked just after low tide hit. Fresh pools, soft light, and my favorite no people! popped on my headphones so I wasn't alone with my own thoughts and got to lookin!
La Jolla Tide Pools-San Diego, California
First few pools I was searching in were pretty standard! Lots of snails, crabs, anemone, and sculpin. It was really nice to be able to just turn my brain off for a while and just be wondering abound the pools. I found myself a nice little perch though and hung out with the crabs and got some pretty pictures.
Solitary Green Anemone- San Diego, California
I absolutely Loved the coloring on this anemone I found, had to snap a couple of pictures and who knows you might be seeing him in some paintings in the future ;)
Tide Pool-San Diego, California
This pool was one of the prettiest I came across while exploring just because of the colors of the rocks and how nice the shape was. There were a lot of Sculpin scooting around in there too and I sat and watched them for a while.
Eventually I ended up moving to a different area of the beach and this spot was a WINNER!! Gosh first pool I came across there was a little brittle sea star on the MOVE. he was making his way somewhere real quick I couldn't even get a good picture of him.
This area also had way more variety in the plant life in each of the pools which i think was part of the reason we had some better spotting luck too. Even the rocks out of the water in this area were absolutely covered in barnacles, mussels, limpets, and chiton. So the area around the pools were also just a little bit more interesting to look at too!
Foliage in the Tide Pools- San Diego, California
But finally here is where we hit the star of the show! Other people had been starting to show up over the last hour or so while I had been wondering around and on the other side of the rocks I just hear someone yelling "SLUG"
So what do I do? what anyone with a slightly obsessive love for all things nudibranch would do. I HIGH TAIL it over these rocks and try to find the person who looks most like they would ALSO be excited about finding a slug at 7am.
And there happily sitting in one of the pools was this pretty little thing
Black Sea Hare- San Diego, California
Now when I tell you I was STARTLED at the size of this girl, she was a CHUNK. Easily at least the size of both my fists if not larger. Like I would need both my hands and maybe some help if i wanted to lift this girl out of the water. and let me tell you she was BEAUTIFUL. I was crouched at this pool just watching her for entirely too long.
Finally after I left her to her own devices I left and decided to just take a nice sit on some of the dry rocks. Watching the waves, and the birds, and the people coming in as the morning grew later. I felt much calmer than before thankfully.
As I was watching the birds I ended up spotting a very cool looking Snowy Egret. Now imagine my surprise when what was just some cute videos of him walking around turned into full blown Nat Geo Documentary because this little guy was out there stalking prey and hunting like a PRO. Though I will say while it only took him like a minute to successfully catch a fish, it DID take him almost three whole minutes of throwing that fish around to actually EAT it. Which did take away a bit from the whole "I know what I'm doing" thing he had going on during the hunting.
Snowy Egret Hunting- San Diego, California
At this point the pools started getting a little busy for my liking. Too many people not respecting the wildlife and I had already been there for about 2 hours so I decided it was my time to take my leave.
The trip did its job, got me out of bed, calmed my brain, and even gave me some good creative inspiration. And I will let you know I immediately went home and took a fat nap.
