Drove out to Los Angeles yesterday to visit my father and hang out in Ontario, but today is all ours. We’ve driven down to San Diego for some ocean time.

The fountain in front of the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography is beautiful, and this is just one small part of it.

Once inside, though, it was obvious that we’d been spoiled by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a rock star among aquariums.

We did enjoy seeing the baby shark in its casing so there was that.

Back out to the ocean to see what we wanted to do next.

It was kind of crazy watching surfers launch themselves into the pounding surf, hoping to have enough forward momentum that they wouldn’t be thrown back onto the rocks. Surfers are a bit nuts anyway.

It seemed natural to just stay along the coast and drive out on Point Loma and the Cabrillo National Monument.

This monument is for Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who in 1542 was the first European to step foot on what would become California: so who was the first-ever Native American to do so?

The Point Loma Lighthouse is an old reminder of an age gone by.