Just like I promised...

...Here are some pictures with people in them:

Early Wednesday morning I took Beeb, Emma, and Suz (Los Sobrinos) to the beach to visit the tide pools.  Emma and Gabriel have been several times before, but this was their first early morning visit to the pools.  Suzanna, who is visiting from The East, has only been to the pools once before, so pretty much anything was going to be new and different!  They were sufficiently geeked.  We saw loads of shore crabs, anemones, and starfish, though purple sea urchins were noticeably scarce.  (Which thing I'm going to have to research.  Was I just looking in the wrong spot?  Has something happened to their habitat to make it less habitable?  Is it off-urchin season?)

As we walked the path from the car to the beach I gave Emma and Gabriel an on-the-spot botany quiz.  Emma remembered names and nativity, Gabriel at least knew the plants as ones he had studied, and (to my relief) both of them easily recognized the poison oak growing along the trail.  Suzanna was sufficiently pleased just to be within smelling distance of the ocean; she didn't really care what plants happened to inhabit the area, though the eucalyptus trees' aromatic contribution was pleasant enough.

The overnight tide had been quite high leaving the beach covered in various assortments of sea weed:  large brown bull-whip kelp, red bits of nubbly Turkish washcloth, and long strands of green surf grass.  There were a few shore birds scrounging up their breakfasts, mostly brown pelicans, seagulls, and cormorants, a few killdeer chick-chicking and piping in the lagoon nearby.  We entertained ourselves a moment or two by watching the cormorants sheepishly duck off the rocks into the surf as if they'd been caught in some act of truancy.  Some of the more startled cormorants flew off the rocks, feet and wings loudly smacking the water.  The large, slow pelicans picked up their feet, checked us irritably over their shoulders and then hovered away, gliding inches above the water.  Man.  I stinking love this place.

 We each set off in our different directions to pursue our own interests.  The kids collected shells, rocks, and surf grass to make "beach bling".

Pretty fancy stuff, too.  As you can see, Emma is very pleased with her handiwork.  Very pleased indeed.

Gabriel spent a good amount of time finding "a rock to wind a string around.  'Cause everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around."  (Mom, by way of explanation, he's quoting a They Might Be Giants song.)  Anyhoo, he found a good one.  He wound surf grass around it... and then threw it into the ocean.

Suz spent a lot of time knee deep in the surf staring at the place where the ocean meets the sky.  Because the fog was still so thick, it was difficult to tell just where that place really was, and so required some long, long looking.

I found myself quite occupied with the tide pool inhabitants. (Shocker.) There were some variations in sea anemone color I hadn't seen before, and lots of old friends to catch up with.  (Have I mentioned that I love this place?)

When everybody was sufficiently stiff from the cold we decided to head back up to the car to head home.  We stopped at Jamba Juice on our way out of town for second breakfast.  The college kid taking our order asked if we were just getting our day started (it was about 9:30 a.m. by then).  We told him we'd been at the tide pools for a few hours, and were actually just finishing for the morning.  He animatedly asked the kids about what they had seen, how far out the tide had been, and complimented them on their willingness to be up early to see Nature's wonders.  They were pleased with the attention, as was I on their behalf.  It's nice to have strangers reinforce the principles we're trying to instill!  Especially when they're "cool" strangers, like a college-attending-smoothie-slurping surfer dude.