We're Here!

 Today's Weather:

Sunny
High - 68
Low - 35

We arrived back in Tucson on Sunday, January 9, but it's taken us this long to get our Wifi hooked up and working.

We had a fun trip down.  We left home on January 2.  We were able to stop at a couple of wildlife refuges in the Sacramento Valley, where we saw lots of wintering waterfowl.  This is a photo of a flock of Snow Geese.

We arrived in San Francisco early in the afternoon.  On Dan's advice, we had tea at a wonderful tea shop called Samovar in the Castro District.  We spent the night with Dan and Liz. They took us to an amazing Croatian restaurant with outstanding food.  The next morning we drove to Atascadero via Highway 1.  Near Santa Cruz we visited another refuge, where we added about 30 birds to our list. We also visited the Elfin Forest at Morro Bay.  It's a really fun area to bird, because all the vegetation is small.  The tallest trees are only about six feet tall, so the birds are easy to see.  We drove along the coast to Santa Barbara, hoping to find the Black Skimmer on the beach there.  We struck out, but did find a huge flock of Brown Pelicans.

These are Heerman's Gulls, also on the beach in Santa Barbara.

We spent the next night in San Clemente.  The next morning we visited Bolsa Chica Wildlife Refuge, which we'd never been to before.  There were numerous shorebirds, including a pair of Reddish Egrets, which are life birds for us.  (For those of you non-birders, that means it's a bird we've never seen before.) Unfortunately, they were too far away to get a good photo.


We had lunch on Balboa Island and spent the night in San Diego. We stayed right in downtown San Diego, across the street from the El Cortez.  At one time it was a hotel but now is apartments.  It's been restored and is really beautiful.

We spent the next morning walking around San Diego.  There are wonderful trees along the beach.  The convention center is in the background. 

There were some wonderful eucalyptus trees that had peeling bark.

This much-larger-than-life sculpture depicting the famous photo from World War II is on the waterfront in San Diego.

From San Diego we headed for Yuma.  This is a flock of Cattle Egrets and White-faced Ibises along Highway 8.

We arrived in Tucson on Sunday afternoon.  The deck isn't finished yet, but it's close.  We were greeted that evening with another amazing Arizona sunset.  It sure is good to be back.