Tag: sky

Photos of first light over downtown San Diego.

Enjoy half a dozen photographs taken this morning around sunrise.

It’s early September, still summer, and the weather has been unusually warm. A bit after 6 o’clock, the sky to the east brightened and broken clouds became even more beautiful above downtown San Diego.

My camera and I moved slowly west down Broadway from the vicinity of Santa Fe Depot. You can see in these photos how obelisk-like America Plaza with its colorfully lit trolley station is prominent in the foreground.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Sunrise above historic Old Town church.

A beautiful sunrise illuminated San Diego this morning. Walking through Old Town, I watched scattered clouds to the east turn brilliantly yellow and orange.

As I passed near the historic Church of the Immaculate Conception, the sunrise promised dramatic photographs. So I aimed my camera skyward.

The present-day Immaculate Conception Catholic Church stands adjacent to Old Town San Diego State Historic Park.

A modest adobe chapel that was built nearby in 1851 would be replaced by this church building. Its construction was begun in 1868 and, after various setbacks, was completed half a century later, in 1917.

In these photographs, you can glimpse a bit of the church’s façade and bell tower, elements of its Spanish Mission style architecture.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Full moon above a beautiful morning Star.

Early this morning, as the sun rose slowly above San Diego, beautiful tall ship Star of India began to shine.

Beyond the Star’s bright sails, the full moon quietly retired.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Sunrise paints the sky above downtown.

This morning, as the sun broke above the horizon somewhere east of downtown San Diego, sunrise colors painted the sky and reflected from building windows along Broadway. It was stunning.

I stood in the median of Broadway at Kettner Boulevard and aimed my camera at the risen beauty. A few minutes later, the fiery colors would fade.

Late tonight another big storm rolls into San Diego. More flooding is expected. Hopefully everyone stays safe!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

A downtown Christmas crane “lifts” spirits!

Have you seen the towering construction crane in downtown San Diego that’s lit up at night for Christmas? It’s hard to miss!

I tried to take good photos early this morning.

The festive holiday crane is bright green, red and several other colors.

It’s one special crane that will lift heavy steel beams and your spirit!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Solar eclipse breaks through in Balboa Park!

Would this morning’s solar eclipse be seen in San Diego? An overcast sky worried many who wished to observe the highly anticipated event.

A huge crowd lined up in Balboa Park near the Fleet Science Center to obtain eclipse glasses. Amateurs set up telescopes, large and small. With the help of Fleet scientists and volunteers, kids enjoyed several fun educational activities, including the creation of pinhole boxes for safe indirect viewing of the eclipse. At one side of the plaza, a laptop showed live images of the eclipse from some cloudless location. Families sat waiting on the edge of the park’s nearby fountain. Minutes were ticking away. Would those clouds above us thin in time, as everyone hoped?

And then–there it was! The crowd cheered! The moon was glimpsed off and on as it gradually passed over the sun’s disk in an annular eclipse that would, at its maximum, obscure about 70 percent of Earth’s own life-giving star.

Several minutes later, the sky would mostly clear, and many in San Diego would take delight in the awe-inspiring spectacle.

Enjoy these photographs of the big eclipse watching party in Balboa Park!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Beautiful sunrise above San Diego River.

I walked in Mission Valley early this morning.

As I passed down Mission Center Road above the San Diego River, the rising sun illuminated low clouds to the east, and beautiful colors reflected from calm water.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

A spirit soars forever in Carlsbad.

In Carlsbad, there’s a special place where a spirit soars forever. That place is known as Dave’s Beach.

Hobbyists who fly radio-controlled gliders, or sailplanes, love to launch their small model aircraft from atop the bluffs at Dave’s Beach. Their gliders dance in the blue sky.

The upsloping ocean wind carries these surprisingly fast RC gliders aloft for sustained, acrobatic flights above the beach. Today, as I took these photographs, I saw as many as four zipping through the air at the same time.

I learned some of the hobbyists using Dave’s Beach as an RC glider port also launch their gliders at the Torrey Pines Gliderport in La Jolla, where similar wind conditions prevail.

In Loving Memory of Our Friend

DAVE KELLOGG

Whose spirit will soar on here forever

April 5, 1948 – October 18, 2006

The above memorial plaque explains why this spot is now called Dave’s Beach. Dave Kellogg loved to fly gliders from atop the bluffs here many years ago.

If you’d like to visit Dave’s Beach, you can find it right next to the intersection of Carlsbad Boulevard and Solamar Drive.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Lakeside’s beautiful Lindo Lake east basin!

Lindo Lake in Lakeside is a beautiful, peaceful retreat in San Diego’s East County.

Recently the lake has become even more beautiful!

A year ago when I took a walk at Lindo Lake County Park, the east basin was fenced off and closed to the public. That’s because numerous major improvements were then being made.

Today the paths around the large east basin are wide open!

Improvements include new plants and trees, wide ADA accessible pathways, scenic viewing platforms and a couple of bird-watching stations with blinds facing the water.

If I lived nearby, I’d be walking here often. There are native flowers, birds, shady trees, sunshine and the tranquil, shining water. Nearby mountains rise into blue sky.

Even on this winter’s day the lake was filled with life. (I’ll be blogging about the many birds coming up!)

I took the following photographs as I walked around Lindo Lake’s newly improved east basin…

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Dreamy ocean photos beyond Point Loma.

Today was an almost perfect day to head out into the Pacific Ocean beyond Point Loma.

For a mid-February day, the water was amazingly smooth and the cloud cover thin. The chilly wind was not unexpected.

I and many others, wrapped in jackets, enjoyed a four hour trip aboard Flagship’s whale watching ship Marietta.

We saw a mother gray whale with her young calf and followed the two from a respectful distance. In two of the upcoming photos you can see a spout. In my previous blog post, I gazed down upon some of the hundreds of dolphins we encountered very close up.

Enjoy a few hazy, dreamy photos I took from the deck of Marietta. There are sailboats, a line of pelicans flying, downtown San Diego, Point Loma, and the Coronado Islands of Mexico off in the distance.

I haven’t edited these photographs at all, except to crop the one photo where the whale spout is most evident.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!