A Visit to the Tide Pools

Mom and I set out this beautiful, warm afternoon to go to the Monarch Grove and the tide pools at Natural Bridges State Beach.  It was 68F at the beach.  In mid-January!

Well, it was so dang warm that the butterflies in the Monarch grove were all out shopping for groceries!  When the temperature is below 55F, they hang in great clusters on the eucalyptus trees.  Today, you could see a fair number of them, but they were all flitting about quite wildly.  It was very cool, but not particularly photographic not impressive.

So, off to find the tide pools.  Well, it turns out that this would have involved great amounts of hiking -- back to the cliffs, down the cliffs, across the wide sandy beach, across a table land that's actually a mussel bed, then finally to the tide pools.  Well, Mom was a bit huffy and puffy after hiking up from the Monarch Grove, so we got in the car and headed up the coast in search of other tide pooling venues.

Pigeon Point Lighthouse Looks to the Sea

We got to the Pigeon Point Light and turned in and hiked around to get a look.  This probably would have been a decent place to try searching for tidal creatures, but the steps down were steep and Mom was kind of sketchy about wanting to hike down.  So, we headed back down the coast a bit to a place where the hike to the sea was not as far down.

Mom Looks to the Sea for the Big Wave

The tide pooling part was not as full of cool creatures as I would have hoped, but it was still nice being out in the sun and fresh air with my camera. And I'm not a teenager anymore, so trying to navigate across slick and wobbly uneven landscape was challenging on my back.  I took my own advice and just waded into the water (to a little above knee-height at times) to the less-slick, more-stable surfaces.  After all, that's why I brought a change of clothes!

Starfish Among the Rocks, Algae, Sponges, Corrals, Sea Grass, ...

So, I got a few photos and a lot of bonding time with Mom.  (She's such a good sport!) And I came away with a plan to map out all the lowest-lows in my calendar for the rest of the year AND to do more research into where the better tide pooling venues will be for next fall and winter.