FE: SoCal from north of LA down to San Diego is a sprawl of neighborhoods and strip-malls, fortunately interrupted by large parks and funky beach communities. Today we get to explore both. First, we go for a wonderful hike in Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. More about the Reserve in Rae’s blog.

RN: Torrey Pines Natural Reserve is almost 2,000 acres that was set aside in 1899 to preserve the cliffs and beach previously occupied by 4 tribes of pueblo natives (Wiki- what else?). Thank goodness for this! Otherwise the communities of La Jolla and Del Mar would be a contiguous line of development along the coast. It is the only place in the world that a special subspecies of pine tree called the Torrey Pine grows. Torrey Pines have extensive root systems that allow the trees to hang onto the sandstone cliffs of the area. I have great memories of exploring this area when I was a grad student at UCSD between 1975-1980 because it is an easy jog from campus to the preserve.

Here are Rae and Mark at the beginning of the hike.

FE: LaJolla is in the distance, impressive cliffs and people playing in the surf

RN: The UCSD campus is the buildings on the top of the bluff closest to the preserve.

FE: Look at how water and storms erode the soft sandstone

Two goofy guys to give perspective to the cliffs

and a most interesting array of birds, insects and plants in this unique biosphere

in the evening we take a walk down in happening Ocean Beach

Where you can get lots of different things at this joint.