Costa Rica Sisters Trip, Full Day One

 What a day!  This place really is gorgeous, and pretty perfect for us.  I did not go to morning yoga, I was just too into exploring and finding those cute birds!  I started in the area across from our room, and eventually wandered all around the gardens across the little bridge, finding and then losing and then finding again the yoga site.  I saw so much!  Although the hummingbird feeders were not very active.  Oh well, I'm glad I found them!

I was feeling pretty ready for some breakfast when their class was over.  Except Deborah and I decided to take the long way, and got lost a time or two, before finding our way out of the gardens.  So coffee and breakfast sounded great!  I love a Costa Rican breakfast, and this one was a good one.  Fruit, gallo pinto, fried eggs, what a tired birder needs!

I did make it to afternoon yoga, by that time they had their tour schedules and spa schedules ironed out.  Afternoon yoga was pretty much all breath work, and I can't say I liked it.  I definitely had some resistance, and didn't feel able to do the holds like she wanted.  It wasn't great for me.  

After yoga I of course went back to birding the grounds until dinner, and I saw toucans at last!  It sounds silly since this was only day 2, but I was really missing them and wanting to see them again!  There were 4 aracari in a tree.  They are so cool! Also some parakeet drama.  A pair of larger parakeets came over, and the little ones did not like it one bit.  They were complaining loudly, but the bigger ones didn't care at all!  It was pretty funny.

Dinner and bed, looking forward to another day!  :-) 

Costa Rica Sisters Trip, Arrival Day

 Well the flights were as long as expected, and we got through them just fine.  We changed at the airport and got some snacks, and found the driver, and then headed onto the long rough road.  There were long stretches of gravel with brief interludes of pavement.  There were potholes of impressive proportion.  The roads I am used to seemed smooth and trouble-free in comparison.  At one point the car couldn't make it up the hill and we backed way down and tried again.  Eventually we made it, and it was all worth it!  What a beautiful hotel!  The rooms are basic but large, with AC, with every amenity that matters to me.  And my room was right across from a very nice garden area, so of course I headed right over!

I found a tody making a nest.  That hanging mess is its nest.  I know, it looks unlikely, but it seems to be true!  

There were woodpeckers nesting in this tree, I didn't see babies, but they were definitely using that hole as a home base, switching off, bringing things in.  So maybe they are on eggs?  Or they have little ones that can't stick their heads out yet?

There were plenty of oropendula, they were just all going through, there were more than the 4 I managed to get a group shot of!  And the video shows one of the few times I saw their call, with full dip.  So funny!

There were many parakeets.  Just so many.  Other places it's a struggle to find them, and it's not easy here either, they blend so well, but if you stick with it you will definitely find them
.  There were at least a dozen residents, and they were not particularly shy!

Walking around the rest of the grounds was also wonderful, and this was my first hummingbird of the trip :-) 

We saw the eclipse!!!!

 I had never seen a total solar eclipse before, and this was our best opportunity.  Probably we will not see another one in our lifetimes!  So I planned to drive about 5 hours to Ohio, stay a couple of nights to give us some good buffer time, and hopefully see the eclipse.

Well it turned out better than I could have planned!  The hotel I chose was accidentally absolutely perfect.  It was across from a college campus, and they were having a huge eclipse event, so the rest of the guests went there.  The hotel staff went up to the roof, leaving the sun patio, with chairs and tables and a perfect view, empty for just the two of us!  We had our eclipse glasses and eclipse binoculars.  And snacks and sodas.  And regular binoculars for during totality.  

The weather cooperated beautifully!  It was forecast to be super cloudy, and there were clouds, but just the high thin ones that didn't really get in the way.  We had a great view, and it was gorgeous!  Even though I had seen plenty of pictures and videos, it was still surprising how gorgeous it was during totality.  This picture is...... well, I took it on my phone with absolutely no skill, so there we go.  

It was definitely worth the trip!  Afterwards we ordered pizza from our room, and it was delicious.

Thank you Ohio!

This was the first long trip with the new car, and it was awesome!  The fancy new features make it so so so much easier and less draining to do a long drive.  Also the traffic wasn't bad at all, maybe because we had buffer days, but it was really much easier than I expected!  So that was wonderful.

I'm so glad we had a little getaway that was okay for Jack and something we both really wanted to do, and really enjoyed.  :-) 

Quick good-bye beach

 Time to head back to the cabin, with a heart full of love!  What a wonderful trip this has been.  I feel like I've had some really great family reconnection time, and seen so many things!  We went by Coronado for a last look at the ocean before heading to the airport.  Here's the pic I took, it's not great in the traditional sense, but it does reflect how it feels to visit.  Everything just layered up with happiness and love!

The day all of our plans changed

 Well, we had a plan, but we ended up doing totally different things.  We were going to walk around a meditation garden that Deborah has been wanting to go see, but when we got there, it turned out they are closed on Mondays.  So, I guess that's for another trip!  Luckily there was a gorgeous overlook nearby for us to regroup somewhere pretty.  H Street Overlook was awesome!  Easy parking, amazing gorgeous view, and dolphins!!!!!  A pod of maybe about 8, quite close to shore, just going along doing dolphin things!  

From there we went to La Jolla, trying to see leopard sharks in their nursery in the clear water, but we were too late in the day for that already.  We did have gorgeous views, and saw just ridiculous numbers of pelicans and cormorants!   A very nice walk which my knees did well on.  And then when we were getting back into the car, a juvie red-tailed hawk was right there!  So we paused again for that. 

https://ebird.org/checklist/S153421512

Then down to the sea lion beach, more great nature sightings.   There were ground squirrels there, my first time getting a good look at them.  And of course sea lions, chasing each other around, hanging out, they are always a treat to see. And look how beautiful the beach next door is!

https://ebird.org/checklist/S153422788

From there, back home and picking up Mom for lunch in Seaport Village.  As we were waiting for a table, a sharp-shinned hawk flew into a tree right by us!  So I reported that as an incidental.  Lunch was amazing.  Nice place on the water, again with the gorgeous view.  And I got huevos rancheros and they were so delicious!  I would definitely go back to that place again!  The rest of the day I just kept thinking back on that meal :-) We walked around Seaport Village, Mom wanted to look around and do some shopping and maybe find a treasure.  Well the treasure that we found was ice cream, thank you Ben and Jerry's!  

Another day, another boat

 We changed our plans.  Originally  from having a relaxing start to the day, hitting the boat for a couple of hours and then heading to nice dinner.  We ended up getting on the boat earlier, having a nice long wonderful boat ride, and needing a little bit of recovery time before nice dinner!  

This time the boat was a fast motorboat, and we did some zooming!  It was really really fun.  First we slowly got out of the harbor

Then it was zooming time!

I again took out my binoculars and we spotted lots of stuff, the highlight for me was a flock (raft?) of at least 175 surf scoters!  They are a cool looking duck with white on their necks that at first fools you into thinking they are maybe buffleheads.  But they are bigger, the beak is wrong, and they have other markings that will leave you doubting until you look it up, and find they are scoters!  That was pretty great.  We went super far, further than Deborah had gone before, so that was really cool.  Again a lot of sandpipers I wasn't able to ID, even though I looked at some in a guide last night.  I did see some that I was confident about, including a long-billed curlew, which was really cool!  Oh and some brant which were really hard to ID.  Looking up a black duck with a white neck ring was useless.  Merlin eventually came up with it, but only on try 3 or 4 of going through the process.  But we got there!  I really need to study my sandpipers and plovers etc. for next time I'm here.  Here's the checklist:

https://ebird.org/checklist/S153361223

Here's my best bird pic, of the brant. I miss my superzoom!  

Then we had a really fantastic dinner at a nice restaurant on the water.  I wore a skirt!  So fancy!  It was beautiful and delicious and I got to spend some really great quality time with Mom.  

Then back to Deborah's to again basically collapse exhausted!

San Diego, Canyon and Boat day!

 I got to San Diego last night, and today was a big day.  We started the day with a walk with the local Audubon Society in Tecolote Canyon, it was wonderful!  Deborah came along and loved it too.  Great guides, great group, easy walk, lots of birds.  Great views of hummingbirds, hawks, scrub jays (a favorite of Deborah), bushtits, wrentits, just a lot of cool stuff.  Here's the checklist

https://ebird.org/checklist/S153297743

I only took one pic from the boat, I sort of forgot:

And here we all are on the doc afterwards!

Then back home for a bit of recuperating, and then we picked up Mom and met Kat and Charlie, and went on a boat!  This kind of boat is called a Duffy, and we went out on Mission Bay, which is calmer.  The combo gave us a nice smooth ride for Mom, and Charlie brought some trains to play with.  I of course brought my binoculars and Kat and I counted just so many great blue herons!  And cormorants.  It was pretty amazing.  Also some sandpipers but I could not ID them, so I didn't enter them.  There was one mystery grebe, which ebird wanted more info about, but I didn't have any more info for them.  I didn't get a pic, and the light was bad, so, sorry ebird!  A highlight for me was a big group of about 40 skimmers!  They are so cool.  Didn't see them skimming, just hanging out.  Hopefully next time!  :-) It was so so wonderful to be out on the water!  Here's the checklist:

https://ebird.org/checklist/S153289672

Then we took Mom back home and headed to Kat's place for kebobs for dinner and some Charlie time, a house tour, and some kitty time.  It was great!  I got to hold a purring cat on my lap!  <3 

Back home to Deborah's, worn out from a wonderful day.