Change Up

I thought it was getting a little tedious for our readers, a few pictures of sunrise, a couple of hummers blowing by, and then a few words of prose so we decided to change things up a little. We had been in our spot on the American Girl for two weeks and that is a good time to move on in this boondocking world. We had a couple of things that needed doing, like dumping tanks, laundry, and getting the AC in the 450 looked after. So I made an appointment for the truck, but first we hauled the rig into a park where we could abandon it for a road trip of our own.

A shot of the moon as I headed out on my walkabout a couple of mornings ago, and below some Ocotillo's and the sunrise along the wander in the desert.

Then we decided it had been 25 or so years since we had ventured into the San Diego area so we made some reservations and headed west, without the Solitude or the truck. They are staying back in the desert for this trip. It is some interesting country to the west of El Centro going over that coastal range of hills. I would call them mountains but they look like nothing more than huge, 4000 foot high piles of boulders, dumped there by some behemoth rock truck. One of the things I saw that kind of bothered me was the mammoth solar installations on the edge of the Imperial Valley, while I have no issue with solar power, we have it on our RV, somehow it seems that land like that in the Imperial Valley, North America's green grocers homeland, is not the place to sterilize so much of it with those installations. I have seen a lot more likely places on land that probably doesn't feed a continent. But enough said about that.

I found this fellow standing on the sidewalk when I wandered down to the local Amazon locker to pick up something, and his buddy was watching over the beach go'ers just behind him.

We had an early dinner at a rooftop place down the road from our hotel called the Pacific Beach Ale House, good food, great staff, and a pretty decent view as well. Then it was back to beachfront walk by our hotel to see the sun sink into the sea. That speck, kind of bug like is a Boeing V-22, maybe some Marines out for their own version of a sunset cruise. I suspect they were combining a sunset cruise/whale watching session with probably some training as they seem to do a lot of circling and swooping out there while we watched.

And in the tradition of Lorne over there on the A Place called Away blog here is a view from my window this evening.

Till next time, life is good here down the road from Dogpound.

Monochromatic Day

Yep it was that kind of day, everything and everybody from Brenda down to our littlest visitors were dressed in shades of gray. It was warm this morning when I got up to watch the sunrise, but there was no sunrise, the sky was gray and stayed that way all day. We had a few rain showers but nothing of any consequences although the humidity was about 98% so the air was saturated enough without actual rain drops.

Some kind of sandpiper I guess

These little fellows visited us throughout the day and they were dressed in their best monochromatic duds. As for their name, well, I prescribe to my friend Dennis Lang's naming convention for birds and these are good examples of "little gray birds". 

We had another visit from our marine mammal friends as well, although this time we just saw this one cruising by just offshore.

And of course keeping with the days theme this pelican made a fly by dressed in his white and gray winter outfit.

This is quite an active port and we saw numerous barges transiting the Bay on their way to the Gulf.

As for us we didn't do much just hung out on the beach and watched the world go by. A great place to chill and recharge.

Matagorda Bay

Well yesterday after consulting the tide table for Matagorda Bay I set up a few markers to see if my interpretation was close. Brenda was up at 4:19AM and said the estimate was good, I myself was still sleeping the sleep of the innocent.

But not much later I got up and saw the sky full of promising clouds and thought I would maybe catch a few sunrise shots. Those who follow me on Facebook have already seen a barrage of sunrise shots that I took this morning, but I will share a couple of the best here as well.

The sunset was pretty nice here but the Bay continued to entertain us throughout the day. We ran into Port Lavaca to round up some of those good Texas Shrimp. The fellow there told us that there was not much shrimping going on in the area anymore, most of the boats were working the oyster beds, apparently there is more money in that. He did lament the fact that boats from other areas, like Galveston and over in Louisiana are coming down here and loading up on local oysters and hauling them back home. Seems like a common problem around the world, our oceans are being exploited beyond their capability to recover. All that said, the shrimp were great in the tacos Brenda made us for supper. 

When we arrived back from our shrimp run these dolphins were cruising the beach right in front of Dogpound Anywhere (DPA) and put on a little show, splashing and diving, as they moved along fishing the edges of the beach.

And after they left this Alligator Gar slipped along the beach, ugly bugger, but not very shy so it was easy to get a shot or two of him. He even gave us a smile as he headed out to deeper water.

And of course there were a few pelicans cruising the beach, but they are pretty stealthy so although they came by a few times it was hard to get a decent shot, but that will give me a goal over the next few days. I don't know much about birds but I am thinking this is a juvenile as I saw a couple that were bigger and were more gray, but then again, maybe this is just a "brown" pelican.

The day started off with a sky full of colours but the days end was a pretty monochromatic affair, beautiful in its own way though. Brenda says the water and the moon restore your soul so I am thinking it will take another few days of soaking in the ambiance here and enjoying the every changing vista before we decide to pull up stakes and move on......somewhere down the road.

Just for those who think I might have forgotten home I did find this shot on the my long lens camera today. The sunrise is great and the cows are Richard Sheehans just Down the Road from Dogpound.

Cows Down the Road from Dogpound North coincidentally I was heading off to pick up Dogpound Anywhere in Red Deer