A Little Slice of the Pacific Coast Highway -2/11/2024

     On Super Bowl Sunday, we left Manhattan Beach for our next stay near San Diego.  My intention was to take the Pacific Coast Highway to soak in the views of the California coast.  We were to meet my cousin at her home in Encinitas.  She had lived in Kansas City for awhile when she was younger and is a huge Chiefs fan.  We were going to meet up with her to watch the Big Game.  I wanted to take the PCH to San Juan Capistrano, where the PCH hooks up with Interstate 5 (or the 5, as they call the interstates in California).  I thought that would be an interesting place to visit.  San Juan Capistrano is historically linked to the return of swallows to their mud nests on the old mission.  Their return had always been on or about March 19.  We were about a month early, plus restoration years ago supposedly interrupted the swallows annual return.  As it turned out, we were running behind schedule and we had to drive past my intended stop along the interstate.

We left Manhattan Beach and first stopped at Hermosa Beach, another scenic California beach town.  We took a short walk along the beach there.  I saw only a couple regular shorebirds there, until my daughter asked me what the little guys were sitting in the ruts in the sand.  I thought she was referring to the flock of sanderlings I was looking at, but she was looking at other shorebirds that blended in well with the sand.  She had unknowingly spotted snowy plovers, about 50 of them scattered about sitting in footprints and other depressions in the sand.
Snowy plovers.  © S. Weiss

We jumped on the PCH in Hermosa Beach and headed south.  For a while the highway was just another road traveling inland with nothing but commercial properties as the scenery.  We didn’t begin to see the ocean and coastline until we were probably near Seal Beach when the road became the main strip along the beaches.  I can only imagine how scenic it would have been to take the route from much further north in California.  Once we got next to the ocean it wasn’t long before we hit Huntington Beach.  The atmosphere really changed, we were in Surf City, U. S. A.  The area near the pier was bustling with activity.  All three of us wanted to park and check it out.  We did and I took a walk out on the pier.  My bird list for the pier included western, California and Heerman’s gulls, a Pacific loon and a large raft of about 100 western grebes.
Western grebe.  © S. Weiss

Unfortunately, by the time we regrouped, my daughter realized we would miss kickoff for the football finale if we continued driving along the coastal highway.  We had to jump off the PCH and get on to The 5 sooner than I wanted.  We agreed that we would take another trip to Huntington Beach later in the week when we would be in nearby Long Beach for the music festival.  We had to forgo the stop at San Juan Capistrano too.  It didn’t mean much to either my wife or daughter as neither one of them claimed to be familiar with the mission town or its swallow lore.  My consolation was noting the swallows sculpted on the highway barriers as we drove through the town along the freeway. 

We made it to Encinitas in time for kickoff, which was at 3:30 p.m. in California. It was good to see my cousin again.  We stayed to watch her Chiefs pull out an exciting overtime win.  Afterwards, we continued on our way towards San Diego.
California towhee in Encinitas.  © S. Weiss








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