Crystal Cove 4

Posted on September 14, 2002 in Biomes Photos The Orange

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We had a few hours before sunset when the OC Friends Library Committee finished with Lynn, so we drove down Laguna Canyon (a place I am going to have to explore with my camera more thoroughly some day), made the left, and drove another three miles to Reef Point at Crystal Cove State Park.

We stopped first at the visitor center which lies up El Morro Canyon. An elderly docent who’d fed himself quite well before reaching his present state of emaciation greeted us and informed us that we no longer needed to pay a parking fee because it was after three o’clock. “But you can make a donation if you want,” he added. I laughed and said that I would save my money this time. “But if you plan to blow up that development on the other side of the ridge, I’ll give to that.”

I took two steps to look over a stuffed weasel and then remembered the latest tragicomedy of suspicion out of Florida. “Oh my God!” I exclaimed, slapping my forehead. “Now watch someone is going to actually do it and you’re going to say ‘Hey, you know there was this guy in the visitor’s center talking about doing that…” The docent shared my laugh and remembered the Florida case. I smiled, dropped a dollar into the donation box for a couple of pamphlets about mountain lions and coyotes that I took, and sheepishly left the room.

We went down to Reef Point then. I photographed the foam of onrushing waves. Lynn found an emerald beetle struggling along the sands. I took a couple of pictures. The rest is her story.

Lots of people loafed on the sand and stared out into the haze. A group of tourists who sounded like they were speaking some slavic language arrived by bus for a luau on the sands. I sneaked a couple of quick shots and then surveyed the sanderlings, the plovers, the kildeer, and the seagulls splashing in the tide along side the kids with their surfboards.