California Part One: The Ocean

Really, and truly, the greatest part of my trip to California was just hanging out with my friend Siri and meeting her baby, Kari, and playing and reading with some of my favorite kids in the whole wide world. (I have lots of pictures to share about that soon).    But, setting that aside, the thing I was looking forward to seeing and experiencing the most was the ocean.  You can imagine how thrilled I was when the Penns picked me up from the airport, and as soon as I was buckled into my seatbelt, proclaimed that we  were were going to the beach.  Immediately.

I’m not so sure they expected me to jump right into the ocean with the kids, but I did!  We were all soaked, jumping in the lukewarm waves (such a difference from Lake Superior) and chasing them as the surf crashed in and out.  Every time I have the opportunity to see the ocean, I am always amazed at how looooooooong the waves are, and how different each wave crashes onto the shore.  It was simply so very much fun, but unfortunately, the sun was setting and we had to drive back to the suburb where the Penns live.

The next morning, however, we were off for another ocean adventure.  We drove to Long Beach to visit a very large and spectacular aquarium,  filled with amazing sea creatures.  It was so much fun to look at all the interesting ocean exhibits, even though, like most places in southern California, it was rather crowded at times.  I won’t even list all the amazing animals I got to see there, but my favorite pictures were taken at the jellyfish exhibits.  There is just something graceful and peaceful about jellyfish floating in the water, even though some of them are a bit noxious if you actually run into them with your skin.

The octopus was a neat, bumbling guy too.  I had a lot of fun watching him scoot around the glass in his exhibit.  

Truly, I could just go on and on and on about how interesting the aquarium was, filled with things I just never get to see.  After eating some peanut butter sandwiches in the warm, balmy air outside, we made our way to a whale watching boat.  I was over  the moon excited about this too, and I’m happy to report I had no problems whatsoever with seasickness.  I usually don’t have too much trouble with motion sickness, but sometimes things get a bit out of whack when I’m pregnant.  However, I told Siri that any amount of vomit was worth the chance to see a whale.  We didn’t actually run into any whales on our boat ride, but we did find a huge pod of dolphins who swam right next to our boat for quite some time, doing all sorts of acrobatics.  It was so very neat.  We also saw a mola mola fish, which turns out to be one of the largest (maybe THE largest, in fact) bony fish.  I hadn’t even heard of it before, but it was interesting, and a very rare thing to get the opportunity to see.  There were also sea lions, and seals, and things of that nature that I saw and learned all about.

I also had a fun time giggling at the California people behind me on the boat who were freezing (it was 67 degrees out) and couldn’t wait to get home to turn on their fireplaces and warm up.

After a bit more time in the aquarium, we searched out another beach right at sunset to play at for just a brief time before our drive home.  So much fun.  I don’t think I could stay away if I lived near the ocean.  It was amazing to think about all those ocean creatures that we saw in the aquarium swimming around right in that water that was crashing up against the sand.   I loved every part of it.