Gwilliam Gazette

Monday, October 31, 2016

San Diego - La Jolla Beach

A new day brought overcast skies, but very little rain. We headed to La Jolla Beach along the rocky coast north of San Diego for a little tide pooling. Unfortunately this time of year, the low tide happens during the night, so it's not great for tide pooling. We still had a great time walking along and looking in all the nooks and crannys and listening to the waves crash against the rocks.

After spending some time here, we headed a little farther north to walk to Black's Beach via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This "trail" is hidden in a neighborhood of multi million dollar homes and the trail is actually quite an adventure, even though it's only .4 miles long. You "hike" through a sandstone slot canyon, cross streams, across slippery slopes using a rope to help you, and walk along cliffs where you are constantly sliding and slipping towards a 20-30 foot dropoff into a rocky gorge. It definitely was quite an adventure, but very fun and slightly scary too!

One website describes it this way: "Be prepared for a mini adventure which is not necessarily safe. This trail is completely made of sandstone after all, which can crumble at any moment. It is never safe to explore this trail after a rainfall as the sandstone becomes far weaker and is more likely to come apart. People have been greatly injured here due to hiking after a storm. With that said, you can look forward to crawling down sand steps, walking across a plank and a climbing down rope to get to the beach. Are you ready?"

This trail is mostly used by surfers, who walk up and down the trail with their surfboards! We saw two of them coming back up - and they do it all barefoot! Once you reach the beach, it's uncrowded, and pretty much the only ones there are surfers. There is no easy access to the beach, you can't drive up to it, so it's not used by those wanting to picnic or take a quick trip to the beach. This beach requires effort to get to, but it's worth it for the peace and soft sand all to yourself!

We didn't take the trail back up, and instead walked up a steep paved access road closed off to the public, which resulted us walking through the neighborhood where we could view all the mansions and immaculate yards that overlooked the ocean. We looked some of the houses up on Zillow and many of the homes are worth more than 10 million, some as much as 22 million!!!! One had 12 bedrooms and 21 bathrooms!

Heading down to the tide pools

Jacob went down to this area to get close to the waves. Every so often, a big wave came and got the entire area wet! He managed to stay dry

After finding the hidden entrance between two homes, the Ho Chi Minh Trail opened up with the ocean down below

These white fluffy plumes were visible all along the top portion of the trail

They did not break off easily!

This was just one of the large homes along the edge of the cliff. This one was like Ironman's house all stainless steel and glass

The small "slot canyon" started getting bigger and bigger

This area looked like there was no way down, but there was! Right in the middle of the crack. So many have walked down it, there are "steps" to help get down

Here is Meghan coming down, using the "steps"

Looking up what we just came down

We made it!!! And it's beautiful and nobody is here!

Just lots of surfers and big waves!

All those dots in the water are surfers. We enjoyed watching them

This trail was quite an adventure and we loved it!

Sunday, October 30, 2016

San Diego Safari Zoo

You all know about San Diego Zoo, but did you know there is also a San Diego Zoo Safari Park?

It's run by San Diego Zoo, and it was started many years ago as a breeding area for mostly larger animals for the actual Zoo. Since then, it's main purpose is still that, but it now does that for many other zoos around the world, and focuses on animals from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and South America.

It has the worlds largest veterinary hospital, a frozen zoo with DNA from extinct and endangered animals, and is nine times as big as the San Diego Zoo, with most of the animals not living in cages, but instead living in their environment. The park itself is about 1800 acres, with a large chunk of that one large area representing Africa with many different animals living together in that area.

Like life in Africa, the animals tend to stay in their own groups, with their main predator - the lion and tiger, in their own enclosures, but near enough they can still hear the tiger and lion's roar.

It was an extremely clean park, and beautiful with botanical gardens, over 3500 different plants all over the place (you would never know it was just sagebrush and cactus before!), lakes, and over 2600 different animals representing more than 300 different species.

A tram takes you on a 30-40 minute tour of "Africa and Asia" and it definitely was the highlight of the day!

There are only 5 of these rhinos left in the world. Two are here at the park.

There is a tethered balloon that takes you 400 feet up to get a birds eye view of the park. (Additional charge of course)

If you are feeling a little spendy, you can opt for the truck ride that actually goes inside where the animals are. Many times the giraffes and rhinos come up to the truck to get food. It's only an additional $120 per person. We did not do this. Maybe next time.

This is a HUGE aloe vera plant.

This is some animal I forgot the name of, but it's endangered and I think there are only a handful left. It's related to the giraffe and zebra. Notice the head and ears are just like a giraffe!