30 Days of Random Topics: The Ocean

Last year at this time I did a series called 30 days of Thankfulness. I wanted to do something like that again this year but I couldn't decide what I wanted my 30 days to be about. I have so much on my mind right now that I am having a hard time blogging. When you have 80 thoughts it can be hard to narrow it down and write about one thing. Anyway I came across this site that generates daily blog topics for you. Every time you go to the site it gives you 8 topics to choose from. So I am going to do 30 days of random topic generation LOL. Lets see how it goes. Here is a link to the Topics page if anyone is interested.

So here the topic for Day 1: Write about the first time you saw the ocean.

That one is easy for me. I grew up in West Texas. West Texas is not only are very far from the nearest ocean it is very far from ... well any kind of water.  We were near a river (stream) and there is a lake near by (pond) but that is about it. When you grow up in a place like that the ocean isn't something you can quite grasp. I mean sure you see it on movies and read about it in books and you understand what it is. But it is kind of like trying to explain the color blue to a blind person. No matter how well you get it intellectually you don't really understand what it is like until you experience it.

So anyway when I joined the Navy I moved to San Diego, Ca. Once I got there I was hanging out with a couple of the guys and I mentioned that I had never seen the ocean. (I loved the guys I went to Sonar School with by the way) So the very first day we were authorized to leave the base they loaded me up in a taxi (first time I had ever been in one of those too) and we headed to the beach.

WOW! What else is there to say? If you have never seen the ocean you can't imagine how huge it is. How vast. How endless. How beautiful. I fell in love with the Pacific Ocean that day. I spent endless hours on the beach watching it. I love the Tide Pools in San Diego. I love the cliffs in San Diego. I admit the Atlantic Ocean, while just as endless, doesn't do it for me.  So anyway here are some pictures of the ocean the way I remember it.

Ocean Beach is the first place I went. It is the one beach in San Diego I would have loved to live near. It is known as the "hippie" beach in San Diego. It isn't as touristy and it is where a lot of the native San Diegans (is that a word?) live.

Ocean Beach in San Diego at Sunset

Ocean Beach Pier



My favorite place to go in San Diego was Sunset Cliffs. That is where we went and hung out with Jennifer and Paul when they flew in for our wedding. There are a lot of surfers there and it was so much fun to go sit up on the cliffs and watch them.

There was a nude beach in San Diego called Blacks Beach but it was "off limits" for those of us at the ASW base so I wouldn't know anything about it ;)

Here was one of my favorites:

Dog Beach in San Diego

But of all the things to do at the ocean front the #1 thing I miss and hate that my kids haven't experienced are the tide pools. High tide comes in and fills all these amazing little pools on the rocky shore line. Then when the tide goes out you can walk around and see all kinds of cool stuff. The pools are full of all kinds of neat ocean  life. Each time the tide comes in it washes out the old and brings in new so everyday it is something different.

Tide Pools



Shell