Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Metal

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This week’s Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge theme is metal. I didn’t think I would participate since none of the photos I have on file contain any metal (at least not that I can remember). I also couldn’t think of any place I would go and take photos of metal without the images looking ordinary or simply boring.

That was until yesterday afternoon, when I took my kids to the Cabrillo National Monument / National Park. We originally went to visit the tide pools. After waiting in line for over 30 minutes just to roll through the park entrance and paying $5 for our visit, we waited another 20 minutes going downhill trying to reach the tide pool area. Why that area is only accessible by car and there are no paths from the main parking lot area is a mystery to me. A park ranger finally told us to turn onto a road on the right hand side that said “no outlet”. When we reached the end of it after another few minutes, we found a secondary parking lot where we could have parked… if there had been a parking space available! But of course there was none. Why the park ranger sent us there in the first place instead of telling us to turn around is another mystery to me. So we could do nothing else than give up and drive back up the hill, park in the main parking lot and view the tide pools from very, very far away. Needless to say, I’m not ready to go back to the Cabrillo tide pools any time soon.

The view of the city of San Diego and the ocean from Cabrillo is quite impressive (I’m saving a few photos for a future post). The on-site museum consists of one large room describing the Spanish explorers in the 1500s, and that’s about it. Fortunately there’s also a lighthouse you can visit. That lighthouse is famous from having operated for a very short amount of time, finding itself in thick areas of fog at the times of the year it would be most needed. Oops…

Here’s what the Cabrillo lighthouse looks like as you walk towards it.

Here’s a closer view of the Fresnel light part from the other side of the lighthouse as the sun was setting down. And yes, my photo is a little crooked but I wanted to show you how ridiculously cold and windy it was when I took this picture. Brrrrrrr…. Still, notice the metal railing, as well as the metal light cover and ladder. Yeah, metal! Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Metal? Checked!