California: Day 7 & 8

Monday started out with a solo walk for me and then a walk with Cindy!

There's the coaster train above.

And here we are!

Here's what I was wearing:

This was a love picture to my Mom.  I was updating her along the journey!

I'm wearing
top: Charter Club (Macy's)

pants: INC International Concepts (Macy's)

hair bow: J Crew

sandals (that you can't see!): Sketchers Bob's For Dogs (Amazon)

I added more layers as we went out because it was wet and CHILLY (yay!)

denim chore jacket: Everlane

later added hoodie: WalMart

crossbody bag: Scarleton (Amazon)

The weather was FANTASTIC - it was misting and raining!

We walked south, along the shore (though not on the beach).

This is near the Swami's self-realization center.

These spider webs had rain drops in them.

There's another ocean overlook with tiki statues!

Cindy was having fun taking photos of plants and getting them identified by an app on her phone.  I later discovered that Google Photos identifies things with their "lens" function!

DANGER!  Active bluff failure!

There were all sorts of weird plants.

This is an araucaria laubenfelsii, called a coral reef pine.

The piney parts stick straight up!

This is a lion's ear!  It's the second weirdest plant I saw while we were there!

It's like colorful 1970s decor come to life!

This is "stinking chamomile".  I thought it was pretty and as far as I could tell, it didn't stink!  

There was a surfer statue here, and I accidentally caught Cindy in the background! 

The houses all clustered on the hills in a sort of higgledy-piggledy

 sort of way makes me happy; even better in the mist!

Morning glories:

Pride of Madeira:

Here's a girl surfer:

As we were walking to the Stonesteps, we looked at the cute houses.

I love the shape of this one and the doors:

Look how pretty the glass is!

I appreciate a turret, and that turquoise door is fantastic!

This ship was always going back and forth:

Look at this neat blue house!

The roof line is cool.

LILACS!!!

They are one of my favorite flowers.

Cindy said this was a passionfruit.  I looked it up, and of course she was right!

She knows a lot about plants.

I thought this was clearly a rose, but it's a Japanese Camelia!

We walked all the way to Los Olas (the waves) Mexican restaurant (3 miles) and back (another 3 miles) in the mist and rain with the ocean nearby.  It was absolutely lovely.  Then we walked to Stonesteps again and went down them to walk on the beach.

The tide was pretty high and we got wet(ter).  We didn't mind!

I made a cairn inside a hole in the bluff.

Then we were back at the motel and ready to get warm!

I tried to get myself to go get in the ocean, but I didn't listen to myself.

We pretty much ate dinner, had warm showers, watched some Netflix, and went to sleep!

The next morning, we cleaned up and headed out.

We weren't super excited to leave beautiful Encinitas, but I was excited to get home to my family and Cindy was excited to get on with the next chapter of her adventure (moving to Wyoming!)

We stopped at Plant Power Fast Food again for lunch.

Again, it was glorious in the outside eating area thanks to the flowers, butterflies, and bees.

I wore this:

top: Charter Club (Macy's)

skirt: Rekucci (Amazon)

bag: Scarleton (Amazon)

unseen sandals: Sketcher's Bob's For Dogs (Amazon)

We took some Plant Power to go for lunch and ate it at this rest stop (though the flies were so bad we had to relocate to inside the car!):

And then we were home.

What a lovely and refreshing trip!

Hope you enjoyed traveling with me to Encinitas, California!