October 31 Halloween

The fall air has come to Southern California. In the morning I am waking up to the temperature in the upper 50's and by 10 AM it is around 70 degrees.  Last Sunday we took a San Diego Harbor Cruise on the ship High Spirits. The boat was used by Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe for the movie "Some Like It Hot" in the early 1960's.

 

     The cruise was a two hour cruise split in two halves. The first half was the inner bay. There were tons of military ships in the harbor, the nuclear surface craft, LSD's & air craft carriers, over at North Island. The conventional engined surface craft down at 32nd Street. These were the fast frigates, destroyers, ammo supply ships and conventional supply ships. The boat in the picture below is one of the Seal delivery boats. They were traveling in a pair and I got a real nice photo of this one passing us.
There were beautiful views of the city, Coronado Island, the Silver Strand and you could even see the mountains over the border in Mexico. It was a nice guided tour. As you can see from the picture, the airport is right next to the harbor and downtown.

The second half took you out of the downtown area and headed toward the open sea. We passed Harbor Island with its hundreds of multi-million dollar yachts. Then we went past Shelter Island where the "not quite so rich" kept their million dollar yachts. After we passed Shelter Island we came to the California Sea Lions resting on the bait pens. These pens are used by the sport fishermen to purchase bait prior to entering the Pacific Ocean. The Sea Lions are just hoping for some free lunch.

 As we were heading back to the dock for the end of the tour, a pair of FA-18 fighter were taking off from North Island just as we were passing the end of the runway

It was a wonderful tour followed by lunch at the Kansas City Bar-B-Q, where they shot the sleazy bar scene from the movie "Top Gun".