Today we went to the La Jolla area of San Diego.  While much of the country is having a huge heat wave, here it’s downright cool – maybe getting up to 70 today.  La Jolla was foggy, so rather than kayaking in cold weather, we walked along the coast.  There are lots of seals and sea lions frolicking in the water and they were fun to watch.  There’s an area called “Children’s Pool” right on the coast.  It’s a protected beach cove that was originally designed for kids to swim in.  Unfortunately for the kids, the seals found they liked it, too.  There have been off and on court battles over beach access vs. animal protection.  In the end, the seals won, although some adults still felt they should walk up as close as a few feet to the seals.  We watched some of these people, I mean idiots, hoping for some good seal-human carnage, but no such luck.

We wandered along the coast and then visited Sunny Jim’s Cave.  This is a bit of a tourist trap where you go down a bunch of stares to visit a sea cave right on the coast.  Sunny Jim today was really Foggy Jim, but hey we saw a sea cave.   For lunch we found an Amici’s Pizza of all places (only recently opened in San Diego).

For the afternoon we headed to Torre Pines State Natural Reserve.  It was a bit of a pain to get to because of some road construction that caused traffic and prevented us from turning where we wanted to.  In the end we made it, only to find they had more than doubled the admission fee.  We like supporting the parts, but this place is no where half as good as Yosemite despite that being what they charge. 

The torre pine is only found here and is a unique pine tree.  I’m not enough of a botanist to really appreciate the differences, but we had a nice walk around the park and along the coast.

After cleaning up and a quick dinner, we caught a show at nearby Balboa Park.  We saw “Divine Rivalry”, about the rivalry between Michelangelo and Leonardo.  I didn’t realize that Machiavelli was involved and that they all were alive at the same time.  The show was pretty good and we enjoyed catching some live theater.

View the photos from today:

http://sanjoseabrams.com/photos/SoCalJuly2012/Day%208%20-%20La%20Jolla%20and%20San%20Diego/index.html