[Paddlewise] E Ticket

Well, I snuck in to sea world again this afternoon without paying admission!
The tide was so low, I thought the park was closed for the day. I seemed to
have the whole place to myself. They had definitely turned off the wave
machine, as the water was calm as could be, but it was a beautiful day
despite the flat water.

I paddled my usual route, but with the calm conditions I put on my helmet
and scooted around the rocky areas that I usually avoid. A lot of the old
familiar rocks seemed to have out of town relatives visiting. Even with the
calm water, I paddled over a lot of water rings suggesting some unknown
hydraulics going on under me. I headed on to the beach and paddled in enough
to play in the waves breaking on shore. I actually had a couple sets of fun
sized waves come in so I got to punch through some white water and get a
little wet. I would have stayed there longer, but I was seeing a lot of
tufts of sea grass as well as rocks underneath me as I plowed through a few
waves, so I figured it would be best to come back with a little higher tide.

There wasn't much going on, except maybe the occasional pelican doing it's
pterodactyl imitation, so on the way home I stopped to hang out at BAR. It
was so calm, I just grabbed on to the rock and hung out there watching the
ocean and listening to the deep throaty sound of the slow incoming tide. As
I started the paddle home, the sun was starting to head down. It was so
calm, I just paddled with my eyes closed. The sun reflecting of the rippling
water hit my eyelids like a strobe light broken only by the shadow of my
paddle as it moved. I was roused from my sightless paddling by the sound of
exhaled air and opened my eyes to see a pod of dolphins pass me by.

I paddled till I was just off the shore in front of Big Corona and decided
it was too pretty to head in yet. I put my paddle in my lap, closed my eyes,
leaned back and just rested on the water. It was the closest I've come to
napping in my kayak. I listened to try to identify all the sounds out on the
water: the rumbling shore break and the passing cars, the seals barking for
a seat on the channel buoy, kids shouting on the beach and the flapping of
wings of the birds trying to get airborne. My eyes opened once again to the
sound of exhaled air, but this sounded too loud for a dolphin. I was not out
even as far as the end of the jetty, so I figured I was in too close for a
whale, but the next time I heard the sound it was attached to the spout of a
whale about half way between me and the shore! I couldn't believe my luck to
see a whale here in this protected area. I started sprinting back toward
BAR, as he was quite a bit ahead of me and got to see him come up 4 or 5
times. The last time he came up and spouted almost right in front of BAR.
There were two people fishing from the rocks there, but they were to busy
fishing to see it. It didn't seem like a very big whale and was pretty quite
when it came up. I figured with the shallow water in the area, I probably
wasn't going to see a tail fluke.

I let him continue his journey south without an escort. As I paddled home I
again realized what a beautiful day it was. The sun was setting against a
band of dark clouds above Catalina and the sky below it was turning a dark
orange. Contrails crisscrossed the sky of wispy alabaster clouds as the sky
darkened. When I hit the beach, the sunset had turned the water an absolute
purple.
I think we kayakers are the luckiest people on the water.
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