Tide Pools!

Today was a beautiful day and I went to the Cabrillo National Monument tide pools in Point Loma with two of the girls from work, Katelyn and Kiersten!

Low tide was at 10:02 this morning, and we got there around 10:30ish, so the tide had already started coming in by that time. Unfortunately we missed the major tide pools, but there were still enough smaller tide pools for us to explore! I've always loved tide pooling ever since I was a little kid and went with my grandparents, and I still love poking around the rocks looking for critters! We didn't find anything toooo exciting, but we still found lots of fun little animals!

Chitons!!!

Limpets!!!

And periwinkle snails, oh my!!!

Some goosenecked barnacles!!!

Starburst Anemones!

Adorable tiny orange anemones!

Hey there, little crab!

A sculpin trapped in a little pool!

ANDDDDDDD, we came across the world's biggest pile of seaweed!!!!! hahaha

Overall, a wonderful day enjoying the ocean and mother nature with friends!!!!

Advanced Diving in La Jolla!!!

This weekend I went diving to get my NAUI Advanced Diver certification! One of my friends from work, Kiersten, and I decided to take this class in order to become more marketable in our field and to give us more to put on our resume. Saturday morning we met at La Jolla Shores, set up all our gear, and made the trek from the parking lot across the beach and into the waves!

Our first dive yesterday morning wasn't too exciting. Just a review of skills with our dive instructor. Though I did see a "fried egg" jellyfish!


After that, we headed home and then reconvened in the evening for a night dive! Even though it was very cold, the night was beautiful, with very clear skies! We hung around 55 ft, along the edge of the canyon, looking for critters! I've only been on a few night dives before, but they are so fun! Its pretty much like a treasure hunt for animals, since you can only see what your light is shining on! We saw lots of stalk anemones, some sting rays, a tiny octopus, and even a baby horn shark!!!

This morning we met at 7 am again and suited up for our deep dive! The La Jolla Shores dive site has a very deep canyon that parallels the shore, so we swam out and dropped down to about 100 feet!!! We saw most of the same creatures as last night, including 2 baby horn sharks and a shovel nose guitarfish!

(photo credit:shovelnose guitar fish:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lemurdillo/3893911493)

Our second dive today was a bit shallower, and we mostly worked on navigation and using our compasses. I've never really understood navigation and was always worried I'd end up in the middle of the ocean, so I usually let my dad lead the dive (whenever we don't have a guide). But now that I know a bit more about navigation and not getting lost, maybe I'll take the reigns next time!

We still have 2 more dives to complete before we are certified, and I think next week we are going to do another night dive and a navigation dive in La Jolla Cove!

(Very old picture, but it's the only good one I had of me scuba diving on my computer! And definitely not in La Jolla, although there is one sea turtle that does live at the shores that I saw once!)

The Natural History Museum is the coolest place ever!

Ever since Night at the Museum came out a few years ago, I have been obsessed with natural history museums! Last weekend, Yoav and I went to Balboa Park (which is the beautiful park in San Diego that has tons of museums), and we went to the Natural History Museum!

I love Natural History Museums because they always have really cool stuff like dinosaurs, animals and other things that have to do with the earth and world! (I'm not really a huge fan of art museums, but since I'm kind of a nerd, I love anywhere that has prehistoric animals! haha) They had a really cool exhibit that had all sorts of bones and replicas of animals that used to live in the San Diego area back in the day, like giant sea cows, megalodons, whales, lemurs, giant sloths and mastodons, among other things!






They also had a Lizards and Snakes: ALIVE! exhibit, which as the name implies, had a ton of live lizards and snakes! I came across the fabled Basilisk, which isn't quite as J.K. Rowling described it in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. hahaha


Afterwords, we went over to the Science Center (which is right across the way from the Natural History Museum), and watched two IMAX movies! I wanted to watch the one about the Galapagos Islands, and Yoav wanted to see the one about surfing the big wave in Tahiti, so we decided to see both!