Sunday, December 15, 2013

Photo-of-the-Week #137 - The Santa Monica Pier, Santa Monica, California, May 2009


 Most of my photos of the ocean have been of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Since I'm an east coast guy, I guess that makes sense. But, I have spent a reasonable amount of time on the west coast of the years and have seen my share of the Pacific from the San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Eureka, California regions.

This photo of the historic Santa Monica Pier was taken from a vantage point on Ocean Avenue, probably in the vicinity of Wilshire Boulevard overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway, the beach and the pier. I took this photo on my "Last Hollywood Tour" in May of 2009. I had left my ranch in the Shenandoah Valley about seven months earlier. I called it my Last Hollywood Tour because I specifically made spending a couple days in Hollywood a part of the trip (visiting my "outlaws" - former in-laws) to see what was still in existence of the recording world I remember from the time I spent in Hollywood during the 70's and 80's.


The Hollywood part of the trip was disheartening because much of what I remembered as gone, demolished, boarded up or repurposed for some other use. But, I managed to navigate my way through the dense traffic down to the beach. It's always a favorite place for me to go. I'm drawn to the oceans. Interestingly, as much as I'm drawn to the oceans, I've never lived at the ocean. Perhaps I'll choose to find a few ocean locations where I'll stay for a while during my nomadic wanderings. Santa Monica Beach won't be one of those places. There are far too many people here for me. 

2 comments:

jonthebru said...

I have only driven by, but the Grand Banks of North Carolina may be what you are looking for at the time I was there you could get pretty close to the ocean.

Ed Helvey said...

I appreciate your suggestion. I've actually spent a fair amount of time on the Outer Banks of NC. I have a friend who has a timeshare beach house between the sound and the ocean - both can be seen from the upper deck of his house that is located in the town of Duck. He has allowed me to use it for a week at a time several times over the past several years. I like the Outer Banks. I've been to where the road ends at the north end of the island chain, I still have to explore all the way to the southern most end. I've also been to Chincoteague Island on the Virginia coast (Del Marva Peninsula - I like it there a lot, too. Actually, I've been to and am familiar with many of the eastern coastal beach areas all the wayfrom NJ down to Key West, the Gulf Coast of FL and Padre Island in TX. The east coast and the Gulf Coast beach areas are probably a bit easier to get access to than the west coast beaches, but I haven't really explored as much of the western beaches, so I may be wrong. The challenge, of course, is that there is only a limited amount of coast line.