Author: Steve

Different strokes. A few days ago, we were surrounded by travel trailers. Now we have a
quarter million dollar Monaco on one side, and a half million dollar Beaver
Coach on the other. We’re the small one in the middle.
We all three agree on tow vehicles though.

Then we saw the Condor. We got to see the giant California Condor. They
live here at Pinnacles. They used to live here. Then they didn’t. Now
they do again. Not everybody gets to see them. The condors hang out
wherever they want during the day. Sometimes they come back in the
afternoon to the pinnacles to spend the night. Sometimes they don’t. Today
they did. There are a lot of turkey vultures here. You watch them in the binoculars,
making sure there is not a condor in there anywhere. There are two hints I
have read about identifying California Condors that I really like: “If you
think you might have seen a giant condor, you haven’t.” That’s a good one.
It suggests you’ll know it as soon as you see it. The other: “From a
distance, can be mistaken for a small plane.” Ooh. Turkey vultures are big birds. Their wingspan is over five feet. They are
so good at soaring. They hardly ever flap. They look like magnificent
birds. Until the condor soars into view. The condor has a wingspan of
almost ten feet, and never flaps. The condor is deliberate in its
movements, it is perfectly steady and makes wide sweeping turns. By
contrast, the turkey vultures look downright unstable. The condor rises
from the horizon like the mother ship on Close Encounters. Two new birds today. Tonight we drive home for an hour to a forty degree temperature drop. A
hundred degrees here. Sixty degrees at the ocean’s shore. Tomorrow, we
paddle the slough.

Mission accomplished. Not the mission of welcoming the new baby Erin. That
didn’t happen. Jacob hasn’t gone into seclusion, but Yousun and Baby Erin
have. We don’t get to see her until some other time. Well, they get to do
what they choose to do, and we get to accommodate. We did get the bassinette delivered. We met up with Jacob at Mike and
Katie’s in San Jose, had a nice visit with them and kids Jack and Allison,
and passed on the baton. We left about lunch time, and headed south for
Pinnacles National Monument. What a gorgeous drive! The California Savannah.
Gently rolling hills covered with grass so dry and brown it’s crispy, dotted
with California Live Oaks. Inland. Hot. A hundred degrees. We saw the
yellow-billed magpies again, a California Specialty. You can’t see them
anywhere but here, but once you get to the right place, they are conspicuous
and common. Just like black billed magpies everywhere else. We have gone all these years without ever seeing California Quail. Well, we
saw them as kids, but we havent seen them since we started couting birds.
Today we saw fifty of them. Not fifty, one at a time, but a giant flock of
fifty of them all around us, clicking, and calling, and clucking. They
nurdle and chortle, scurry about, and kick and scratch dirt and grass into
the air. They are so cute! They are so cute, I want to chase them down to
hug and cuddle them. I refrain. The perfect feeding station. The oak tree extends over the road. Acorns
fall from the tree onto the road. Cars drive past and crush the acorns.
Quail scurry out onto the road and eat the acorns. Not many cars drive
past, so the quail get all the time they need to eat.

Some tidepooling. We watched the tide go in and out. We watched the
cormorants flow from right to left.

Wednesday. Up at seven. Stalled until nine. Drove away from Sacramento, skirted the
bay area, past San Jose, over the hill to Santa Cruz, down the coast highway
to Moss Landing. We were checked into the RV park by noon. Solid traffic.
It was like driving through central Denver. For three hours. For one
hundred sixty miles. We were prepared for the RV Park. RV parks in the wide-open spaces can be
spacious. RV Parks where real estate is more dear, like at the beach, can
be much tighter. We measure them by the average width between spaces.
Spacious parks can have average site widths of thirty or forty feet. Tight
parks will have widths of fifteen or twenty feet. That’s what we expected.
Something like a parking lot. That’s not what we got. The spaces are
fairly close, it is high rent real estate, but what a beautiful park! Right
on the peninsula next to the marina. A five minute walk to the beach and
the ocean waves. Nice level cement pads. Grass. Landscaping. Seagulls.
Shorebirds. Pelicans. Blue sky. Seventy degrees. A light ocean breeze.
Ooh. We’ll have to stay here a few days. So what are we going to do? Jacob and Yousun are in no hurry to get the
bassinette. What are we going to do with ourselves until they decide they
want the bassinette delivered? Let’s see. We’re settled in a campground at
Elkhorn Slough. It’s one of the top birding spots in the country. It’s one
of the top paddling spots in the country. We have our birding binoculars.
We have our kayaks. What can we possibly do to fill the time? We’ll have
to think of something.