Playing Catchup

I was camping all weekend long with the family up at El Capitan State Beach.  What a great place to get away from the business of the city!  It’s just a couple hours away from Los Angeles, but it makes you forget that how close you actually are to a major city.

Here are a few photos that I took over the weekend to bring me current on my 365.  Bad news is that I’m headed to New York for a couple days and will not have time for any photos other than whatever I take with my iPhone.  So I’ll be dark two more days then I’ll have a couple days of my best iPhone images on my return.

Cheers!

Sunset at El Capitan, March 12

Rock Stacking at El Capitan, March 13

Rock Stacks at El Capitan, March 13

Nate's Rock Stack, March 13

Dawn at El Capitan State Beach, March 14

Sea urchin shell, March 15

Trip to Secos

Finally, I felt good enough to get out of the house today!  With Nate in tow, I drove up the coast to check out the place where I caught my first really memorable wave.  I was riding a borrowed 1970′s 8’6″ Skip Frye with a crazy vee bottom.  I remember making a bottom turn and feeling the sensation of being on what felt like an endless wave.  It’s a perfect little wave too.

Today, there wasn’t much size to it, but there was nobody on it.  I mean nobody.  I’ve seen it plenty of days this size with a dozen people paddling around each other to get one of these tasty little morsels.

Of course, I was watching Nate so I didn’t even have my board with me so I just tried not to look at all the little waves go unridden.  Instead, we tried to find some cool shells and picked up some trash here and there until it was time to head off the the park as I had promised.

Empty Waves

Nate showing off his balance

A crazy neon green anemone (no Photoshop, I promise)

Ready to head to our next destination

Royal Palms State Beach

My family and I met up with my brother’s family to spend an afternoon at the tidal pools at Royal Palms State Beach.  I brought my camera, of course, and was able to nab a couple shots just before the sun went down.

Happy Sunday!

Tidal Pool

White Point

The Serpent Jetty, Visit #2

Every surfer knows how much sand can move around from week to week.  It becomes really apparent when you have a point of reference like a jetty.  This morning, I went back to the Serpent Jetty to see how different it looked today from a month ago.

The berm that I was standing on last time wasn’t nearly as big as it was last month so I didn’t try to match the same perspectives as before.  Regardless, you can see in the final two images how much more sand was built up around the jetty today.

It’s this constant movement of sand that plays a major factor in the shape of the waves at your typical beach break.  You could have super fun corners one week and beach-long closeouts the next.

Serpent Jetty, Perspective 1

Serpent Jetty, Perspective 2

Serpent Jetty, Perspective 3

Serpent Jetty, Perspective 3 (from January 25th)

Manhattan Dawn

I was up pretty late catching up on a few days worth of Olympics coverage on my DVR so I wasn’t able to get up quite as early as I had hoped.  So, I just drove to Manhattan Beach to grab a photo for today’s 365.

I was surprised to see a bunch of people down at the pier this morning.  Apparently, they were all there to work out as a group where some big dude was yelling at everybody to run harder.  Funny thing was that the guy doing all the yelling didn’t seem to be very fit himself.  But I guess if all you need is for somebody to scare you into working out harder, he would definitely do the trick!  As for me, I’ll stick with my virtual coach who lives inside my Wii.  (Did I mention that she has a crush on me?)

Manhattan Dawn

San Pedro Sunset

We had a family trip down to the tidal pools in San Pedro this evening.  We were treated to a beautiful sunset as the waves broke over the rocks.  Hope you had a wonderful Presidents’ Day!

San Pedro Sunset