Southern California

San Diego

La Jolla was our favorite place in the San Diego area. The ocean crashing against the cliffs was spectacular to watch and we enjoyed watching the seals with their pups, sea lions sleeping and playing, pelicans, and cormorants showing off their colors to try to woo a mate.

Our day in La Jolla was warm and sunny and we spent an hour exploring the tide pools.

After enjoying the coast and watching surfers for a while we hiked Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. We could hike there every day and not get bored. Stunning cliffs with red soil, beautiful views , flowers and cactus just coming into bloom!

(Those spots that look like shark fins under the sunset are surfers waiting for the next wave)

We had a nice time visiting Ken’s former colleague, Kurt and his wife Jen. After enjoying dinner at their house on our first day in San Diego, we spent an afternoon hiking at Daley Ranch then enjoyed dinner at a local beer garden.

Joshua Tree National park.

We stayed in a town with about 1000 wind turbines (given how windy it was all the time that was a great location for them) against a backdrop of towering snow capped mountains. The desert was also further along than those we had seen before and we got to see what the spring bloom does to otherwise bare soil. It was beautiful.

Joshua tree was a very fun park. It is composed of two deserts - the Mojave desert and the Colorado Desert. The Mojave has mountains made of boulders (formed from cracks when they are still underground then as the rock above erodes away water gets in the cracks leaving just boulders exposed) which we had so much fun climbing! It also had the strange shaped Joshua tree which is actually a yucca. Again, we were lucky because many of the “trees” were in bloom.

As we drove towards the Colorado desert, we saw fewer boulders and Joshua trees and more cholla and smoke bushes. I love the Teddy Bear cholla and to my delight we found a huge garden of it. The smoke bushes are wispy bushes that do look rather smokey

Ken fought off a rock monster - just like in Galaxy Quest, then we climbed several boulders to watch the sunset.

Los Angeles

The weather was beautiful the whole time we were in LA. We spent a couple great days with Jerusha’s good friend Steve, and his partner Joe. Steve attended BU with Jerusha and though they were great friends in college, they have only seen each other once since graduating. Steve and Joe showed us around Santa Monica pier, the Venice canals and Venice beach. We spent a while mesmerized by the skaters at the skatepark. Dinner at Dukes on the Pacific Coast Highway (the famous Rt 1) ended our first day.

Another day was spent on a private tour around Disney headquarters where Steve works, followed by a Thai dinner with Joe. It was so lovely catching up with Steve and meeting Joe.

We also spent an afternoon with one of Jerusha’s former students from Lexington. Naomi is a scientist modeling microorganisms and their interaction and evolution in the ocean. After having lunch with her family, we spent a couple hours at the Huntington Botanical Garden. This was a fantastic garden with another cactus garden (YAY!)

We spent a few hours at the La Brea Tar Pits. These pits, which are just sitting right in the middle of LA, are an astounding source of ice age fossils. They have collected nearly 5 million and are still researching the pits. Though the largest pits are fenced off, we could still see them easily and it was fun to watch the methane bubbling through. Small pockets of tar push up through the grass all the time and Ken had fun poking at one of them.

We spent a day hiking north of LA. We climbed to Inspiration Point at Roger’s State Park and had a nice view of the city. Then we went to Malibu and climbed up to The Point from the beach. We saw dolphins and sea lions, but according to others we talked to, we missed seeing whales by about 15 minutes!