the trip back

After more than two years in California, it's time to make the trip back. This time we're heading straight for Las Vegas, and driving through the Rockies.

pelicans

Here's a  pelican grooming--possibly trying to attract--

the attention of this handsome devil.

bad birdie

We have Snowy Egrets on the East Coast, but you'd really have to go to a wildlife sanctuary, or to some other out-of-the-way place to see one.

So I was surprised to see this fellow just strolling around the Oceanside Pier, trying to look nonchalant. I wondered if I missed noticing a female bird he was considering trying to get to know.

  

Until a fisherman walked away from his bait, and the egret quickly moved in and snatched a fish. He must do this regularly, as he seemed to have it down to a routine.

 

Here he is looking more like a wild thing.

oh thank heaven for 7 eleven?

I saw a rainbow the other day--one that actually went across the sky in an arc, the way a child's drawing does. I have taken a few other pictures of rainbows, but I only saw this one other time, and didn't have a camera. I took quite a few shots, trying to make the most of the rainbow's setting--a busy highway here in Oceanside.

No matter how many pictures I took , or where I stood, I seemed to get this 7 Eleven sign in the photo.

I nearly laughed out loud when I crossed the street to see what I could get from there--and the rainbow seemed to be making the proverbial crock of gold out of the 7 Eleven sign.

squirrels

Look very closely.

Here's our neighbor squirrel, out of his hole in the rocks.  I missed seeing the squirrels, so common in the east. In the west, a squirrel is uncommon--something that usually lives in the woods, like a chipmunk.

the sunsets are nice, but...

Sunset over the Pacific. It's still the wrong ocean, facing the wrong way.

Another December sunset.

Sunsets are nice, but I still miss the weather. All of it. I missed it the first morning we were here, on the first day of November, when it's supposed to be cold, or cold and rainy. California doesn't have weather. Most citizens of this state probably can't name the weather person on their local TV news program. It feels like an April morning every day. 84 April mornings in a row. Not the place for someone who has always enjoyed weather, of any kind or description. But the sunsets are pretty.

La Jolla

La Jolla is famous for its seals and sea lions. This fellow came out of the water and struck a pose, which he held for several minutes

A pile of seals.

Pelicans. I don't know if they nest here.

Sea lions and cormorants.

Seals and cormorants.

Where pigeons roost when they move to California.