Thursday, June 24, 2004

Oceanside

Tuesday.

Still at 299.

Our RV site is right next to/underneath the railroad tracks. They're on a
berm and a bridge. We're next to the berm part. Amtrak runs passenger
service back and forth all day long. The Coaster. Brother Bill is probably
familiar with it. Traffic dwindled to a few freight trains overnight. We
put on a couple of fan background noises, and we hardly heard the trains at
all.

Judy did some errands and visited with her sister-in-law Barbara. I stayed
to do some work. I tried the WiFi. No signal. I tried the cellphone. No
data signal. Plenty of voice signal, but no data connection. They have
WiFi here, but with a very limited range. They invited me to bring my
laptop to the office and try it there. It worked. It worked, but only sort
of. I received all my email. I could look stuff up on the web. Nothing
would go out. I can't send email here, only receive it. So I know what the
office is up to. They just can't tell what I'm up to. I'm still cleaning
up Colorado client lists and thinking about New Mexico.

It's cool and cloudy here, but warm enough to go walk on the beach, so I
think we'll go walk on the beach.

300!

Hanging out at the little lagoon down the path between here and the beach, a
little white tern was flying around. We see these all the time in Texas.
They're Forster's terns. But this one had his summer outfit on, so he
looked different. I looked him up when we got back to the motorhome. He's
different alright. He's even smaller than a Forster's Tern. Yellow bill.
He's a Least Tern. Number 300. Yeaa.

301, Tricolored Blackbirds. They look like red winged blackbirds, but they
have white instead of yellow under the red on the wings. They're basically
only in California. They're in the marsh between here and the beach.

Saw a pied billed grebe. Saw some other grebes with white streaks on their
heads and red faces we don't recognize. Looked them up. There is no such
grebe. They are probably an immature something. We saw some immature
coots. They have red faces instead of white. It doesn't say anything about
that in the book. Maybe we should just stay and watch these grebes until
they mature and we can tell what they are.


Becky got released from bed rest to light activity.