Photo taken by Brenda Ponnay

This past Monday morning I was in the kitchen doing dishes and Annalie was playing in the front yard when she saw a piece of orange paper slide underneath the front gate. She brought it inside to me so I could tell her what it was. I was dismayed to see that it was a notice from the city that our water was going to be shut off from 8am to 6pm the next day due to work being done in our neighborhood.

Having one’s water shut off for an entire day is never convenient. It’s even less so when you have company staying with you. Brenda and Bug were on their way to our house even as I read the notice, and we had planned Tuesday as a hanging-out-at-home day, with some cleaning and organizing before the vanilla party on Wednesday and a bunch of crafting Brenda wanted to get done. But we thought those things would be kinda hard to do without water on tap, not to mention how many times preschoolers and coffee-drinking moms need to use the toilet during a 10-hour span. We decided it was a good day to visit Sunny Jim Cave instead.

Photo taken by Brenda Ponnay

When we lived here in the late 90s we went to La Jolla Shores beach all the time, and we always meant to go see Sunny Jim Cave right next door to that beach, but we never quite got around to it. A good friend of Brenda’s used to live in La Jolla, so she used to hang out there quite a bit, but she hadn’t been to the cave in years. And Annalie and Bug had never been there, of course. It was decided: we were off on an adventure!

Parking around the beach in La Jolla is always crazy, apparently even in the middle of a weekday in November. We parked by Children’s Pool Beach and walked from there. It was about a half-mile along the footpath at the top of the cliff and through Ellen Browning Scripps Park, where we passed a large gathering of scuba divers just getting out of their gear and stripping off their wetsuits.

Along the way we spotted hundreds of pelicans, seagulls, and what I think were cormorants; and many, many harbor seals swimming in the water and sunning themselves on large rocks near the shore. Children’s Pool Beach isn’t really much of a swimming spot anymore, in fact, because of all the harbor seals who live in the area and contaminate the water with their waste. But they sure are fun to watch.

Photo taken by Brenda Ponnay

At the cave store we paid the entrance fees, and headed towards the stairs. We paused at the entrance to read the sign proclaiming that the stairs had been there for 100 years, and they were perfectly safe…but that anyone who chose to climb down the 145 stairs did so at their own risk.

Photo on left taken by Brenda Ponnay

As soon as we entered the tunnel that had been carved out of the cliff, the air was noticeably cooler. Walking all the way down didn’t take us very long, even though Annalie was slightly creeped out towards the bottom by the wetness of the walls and the stairs, and Bug usual pace might be called snail-like. There were pigeons flying around in the cave, and graffiti all along the wooden rails of the deck, and there was the cave opening in the vague shape of a man’s profile, and the blue water and blue sky beyond. We made it!

Photos taken by Brenda Ponnay

Annalie and Bug looked around for about two minutes and then…they were ready to go. It’s not like there were any rocks to climb on or anything, just a wooden deck and a hole for viewing the ocean. Not a big freaking deal to kids who live in beach towns, I guess! We headed back to the tunnel to make the 145-stair climb.

Annalie and Bug counted their steps as we went up. We didn’t start counting till around the 30th step, but Annalie kept on counting all the way to the top, which she reached a good 30 seconds before I did, and—since Bug insisted on climbing every step herself—a good two minutes before Brenda and Bug did.

Two minutes might not sound like long to you or me, but I suppose to a kid that might feel like an eternity. The picture on the left is the face Annalie was making as she told me she was boooored and ready to gohhhh. But as soon as I said, “Could you please smile for me, just for a second?” she willingly obliged.

It’s a good thing the walk back to the car was mostly downhill, because Annalie declared that her feet were too tired to walk, and I ended up giving her a piggyback ride much of the way. I think Brenda had to carry Bug some of the way too, so we were glad to stop and take a quick break in one of the gazebos that overlook the beach. Brenda took these awesome shots of me and the kids there. I especially like the one of me and Bug. For some reason, we don’t get in a lot of photos with each other’s kids. We should try to do that more.

By the time we left La Jolla, ate lunch, and stopped at Starbucks for an afternoon caffeine jolt it was only two o’clock, which meant another four hours to kill before they turned the water back on. But we had another destination up our sleeves to fill the afternoon…

…which you can easily figure out if you look at my Flickr stream, a certain photoset in particular.

Stay tuned for Part 2, which I may write after I write about the vanilla-making party Brenda and I had with Sue, Heather, Bonnie, Jen (but not Sonja, *sniff*), and assorted children. Or maybe I’ll write Part 2 first! You just never know with me.