Fun in the Sun (and melting in the Desert Heat!)

Our Summer Vacation..... Started planning in April and it FINALLY got here in July! We left Houston on Monday on an early flight and arrived in San Diego around 8:30 a.m. Got the rental car and we were off to explore the coastline. We've already done a lot -- visited Channel Islands National Park (only 250,000 people make the visit each year!) and saw dolphin pods playing with the boat as well as sea lions resting on channel markers.

We even found Mother Nature's welcome to us.....we found many feathers among the rocks!

Here's the view we had once the boat departed the dock .... and left us to explore Santa Cruz Island for several hours.

We saw many interesting things - from this gull who discovered that her pedicure had been scuffed during her picture perfect landing..... to a really cool shadow of a plant on a small rock.....

to this "bear" found among the discarded leaves of one of blue gum eucalytpus trees near the picnic area.

this is a close-up of the detail of bark on one of the blue gum eucalyptus trees on the island .....

We hiked a portion of the trail on the island that belongs to The Nature Conservancy and found a small "house" created as a lookout when the island belonged to private citizens.

There was a cattle farm previously (bldg has 1887 on it!).

After making it back to the boat landing area we had a picnic then scoured the beach for "treasures". While there is the policy to "take only pictures, leave only footprints" we added our "finds" to the table that showcased finds from other visitors.

 

We were treated to the arrival of the supply ship from the National Park Service which is the only way that occupants of the island get supplies.  This ship had quite a cargo on it!

After the supply ship departed, our "Island Adventure" arrived to return us to the main land.  What a day it was.....lots more photos to be uploaded ... check back later!