March 17, 2019 - Sunday -
St. Patrick's Day - Today we took a long ride over to Rancho Palos Verdes, CA to
visit the
Point Vicente Interpretive Center. We had been here during June of
2017, but we returned for "Whale Season!" The annual migration of whales
is now at its peak and we were hoping to get lucky and see a few today.
The Museum portion of the center is currently closed since they're mounting new
exhibits. It's almost a two hour drive to get here so we had our fingers crossed
all the while hoping that the whales would cooperate.
The "whale watch veterans"
occupied the choicest viewing area.
There are currently millions
of these painted lady butterflies all over SoCal. They're everywhere!
We arrived at 9:00 AM and
the first thirty minutes we saw a half dozen whales, and one with its calf.
This is the momma whale
following her calf, which is just ahead of her under the surface.
Now momma is seen helping to
train her calf with a little nudge.
While we didn't see any
large whales breaching the surface, it was satisfying to see a half dozen within
a short period of time. The picture below is the Point Vicente Lighthouse
with a beautiful, clear shot of Santa Catalina Island in the background.
As an added bonus to today's
adventure we were able to return to
Avenue Italy for
lunch. The first time that we were here we absolutely fell in love with
their food, so we were anxious to try it again.
Our appetizer was their
tender and delicious fried calamari.
Judy had their "Fettuccine
al Bardo" with creamy garlic, pecorino and parmigiano cheese.
I had their "Linguine alle
Vongole," which is linguine pasta served with sautéed manila clams in white wine
and garlic.
It was a beautiful day, we
saw some whales, had a great lunch and we were able to listen to the ocean as it
broke against the shore.
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