Day 11 -- San Onofre

Tuesday, Aug 21, 2007

Ankle recovering well. Time for another sausage and egg meal at 6 AM, then off to the beach.

Here's the San Onofre parking lot. It extends for about a mile, but on good swell days, people line up two hours before sunrise in order to get a parking space.


This beach is just north of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, making the water a little warm and kind of tingly.




Swell is even bigger today, although there are significant lulls in between sets. Perfect conditions, very little wind. This wide shot, taken during a lull between sets) shows you how many surfers are in the water (click it to count them):


Here's a surfer girl (is it OK to say that?) catching a nice ride on a smaller wave:

This shows a medium set rolling in.

Use this next shot to gauge the size of the waves. The guy riding is probably about six feet, making the wave 5-6 feet. The next wave coming in is larger. There was one guy who would wait for waves much further out than everyone else. He'd have to wait an hour or more for a wave that was big enough to break out there, but when he caught one, it was a great ride, cheered by all.

I surfed for about four hours, then made a PBJ lunch at the car. I violated my rule about never putting things on the roof, because it was either that or the sand.

The contents of that box are now strewn along the San Diego Freeway -- ha ha, just kidding. Note the locked Pelican case holding the laptop in the lower right of this next picture.


There's very little shade here, and it's hot, but I'm getting used to it.

Car was getting pretty dirty at this point in the trip, so I washed it at the self-serve car wash (this is boring, right?).

Before


After

Then it was off to the library, where I'm sitting now. Public libraries are the place to go to access the Internet. No need to buy coffee, and they are are quiet, cool, and many have power outlets for laptops at each table.

Here's where I am now (San Clemente Public Library):


I'll hang around here a while, wait for the air to cool off a bit, then head back to the campsite.