Mom and Dad come to California; March 2008

Mom and Dad gamely came out to California in March of last year.  It was their consolation prize for not being able to get away in their RV over the winter as planned.  [Mom's step-mother, Lunia, passed away (at age 92) at her home in Valencia, Spain a couple of days before Christmas.  They spent the holidays and the first couple weeks of the year over there sorting out her flat and its contents.]

We had a great week together, in a small cliff-side bed-sit kind of cottage on Sunset Beach, which is midway between Santa Cruz and Monterey.  We got in lots of hiking and bird-watching.  Besides the beaches and estuaries, which are great spots for birds that time of year, I took them inland to Pinnacles National Monument, with the hopes that we would see some California Condors.  If I could get 'condor' on Mom's life-list, I knew I'd be in the will.  Apparently, that day, the damn birds were over at the beaches, according to one park ranger we chatted with.  Figures.

Here's what we might have seen, if we'd been a bit luckier...

(A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to see some condors on a hiking trip in Big Sur, soaring over the Ventana wilderness.  There are also several lazy birds that just park themselves on the Highway 1 guardrails overlooking the beaches below, waiting for dead seals and other such delicacies to wash ashore.  Volunteers from the Ventana Wildlife Society try to shoo them away from the crowds of people that gather; after years of trying to reintroduce the condors back into the wild, the last thing they want is for them to get friendly with, and reliant on, humans.  We're a dodgy lot.)

There are some nice photos of Mom and Dad here.

With lots of love from Deb