Our new Favorite spot- Lovers point park

We had visited this park in Monterey right after San realized she could only limp along for a few days. Lovers point park is perfect to park right near the beach, get down just 15 steps and get your feet wet in the waves. 

When the BIL's family visited, we made another trip to the park..

We made it in the evening and it was overcast and almost started drizzling after we spent an hour at the beach.. so we made it back home with a nice dinner at Los Gatos in a Mexican place. 

Here are some pictures from the outing..

I started doing a yoga pose.. but the wind was stronger than last visit and I was not that confident of my balance.. so abandoned the attempt halfway..

Then a gull came and sat next to me.. very close to me. Must be a very sociable gull.. so I took a Gullfie..

and here is the "making of the Gullfie" shot from Jr. 

the star of the show..

I think it has been trained to pose.. maybe it expected me to hand it food after posing for photos.. dont know!

We had fun in the waves..

We will be making many more visits to this place over the years is our guess.

Love this beach!

Watching a sunrise after a long long time

As a person who is so used to watching sunsets on the west coast over the ocean, it was odd for us to go chase a sunrise. Two weeks ago, we had to drop Jr. at SFO early in the morning. It had been a day since my gum surgery and the pain was starting to show.  Also I was on a mission to get off pain killers within a day so the 60 day Yoga challenge could continue. Taking painkillers and doing yoga is like drunk driving your body.. never ends well. 

I was also sad to see Jr. go. Not that I saw her when she was home during the last month. We had maybe a 30 minute overlap of our waking hours on a daily basis. 

San got us some help and info from a couple of friends who had recently shared snaps of Golden gate sunrises and Kirby cove views. 

managed a smile with my face still looking like an "idli paanai"! Both these are iPhone selfies .. so you can see the auto color changes..

We dropped Jr. at the airport and drove in the dark to Battery Spencer. A former military installation that apparently had canons mounted during World War times and never used. You get amazing views of the bridge from here. We were the first ones there after we used a flashlight and made our way. Within 20 minutes a dozen photographers showed up out of nowhere. It was like they knew exactly when to come and set up shop, click and disappear. It was hard to tell if they were wearing masks, so we moved out of the area.  We had been standing there for a good half hour already to enjoy the gradual brightening and once we saw the horizon light up, decided to go out and down to Kirby cove. 

We were the only ones on that road and it was probably a mile and a half walk down to the beach. This time only three other folks came to join us. We had enough gaps to put our tripods and take pictures. 

Have put the photos as a slideshow..

There were a few iPhone photos that I shared on Facebook but was waiting for a laptop and Photoshop to get the pictures from the Canon downloaded. The iPhone is good, but it auto adjusts the brightness, contrast and color to be able to "see" everything. When you take a photo of the bridge where everything else is dark because is the sun is not out yet, the pictures look like broad daylight and all the hues are gone!

It was frustrating. (you can see it in the video taken with the Phone and compare to the photos from the Canon). I had to adjust the iPhone photos to make it close to what we saw.

It is a just a question of tiem before I click a picture of me and San and the iPhone shows me a picture of Shah Rukh and Kajol instead of our faces.. so much for AI !

All said and done, the sunrise was breathtaking. We really enjoyed it and it provided me a good distraction from pain physical and emotional. 

We did check the tides for that morning and saw it was okay for 7AM. The tides have washed ashore so many people in last few months and we were warned by friends to be careful. 

We will definitely visit this place again! The Cove and beach are beautiful!

A belated birthday present

The family co-operated as planned on the birthday present.. a family portrait.

The idea was to wear something we all have.. flannel shirts and blue jeans..

This was the first family portrait since Jr.'s graduation..

That middle aged man in the picture is happy for that moment. 

got this pic of Jr. as she was switching sides while doing the test shots.. she is always my test subject. 

We have another month to put enough fat on her and send her back to the midwest winter..

That that parent, that that worry! 

Hope all of you are having a safe and happy thanksgiving!