A new experiment this year was the stuffing muffin, or "stuffin".

We decided that Thanksgiving dinner in San Diego would be the official kickoff for our trip. The holiday was invented by explorers, and the corner of the country makes a natural starting line for a cross-country drive, so it seemed to fit.

Hilary's parents hosted at their home in La Jolla. (It's pronounced sort of like the Georgetown mascot.)

Here's the rundown on dinner:

• 11 people
• 20 pounds of turkey
• 3 kinds of stuffing
• Plenty of gravy
• Mashed potatoes
• Brussels sprouts
• Sweet potato & apple tsimmes
• Cranberry & pineapple relish
• Dinner rolls with butter
• Apple pie
• Cranberry-almond cake
• Ground walnut cake
• Petit fours

Turkey (stage 1)

Turkey (stage 2)

Apple pie

Cranberry-almond cake

Along La Jolla's shore is a small man-made cove known as the Children's Pool. Back in 1931, when public swimming pools were rare and lifeguards doubly so, local philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps funded the creation of a seawall-enclosed lagoon so that children would have a safe place to swim.

However, the children quickly discovered the underwater sluice holes and how much fun it was to try to swim through them. This of course was ridiculously dangerous and so the holes had to be sealed. Afterward, sand started to accumulate until the lagoon had turned into a tiny beach.

In the 1970s, harbor seals started visiting the beach periodically, especially during winter. Their numbers gradually increased, and by the 1990s, they were showing up every day at high tide, all year long.

This had led to a classic California confrontation: on one side were the beachgoers, who were getting annoyed by all the seals and their, uh, byproducts. On the other side were the animal lovers, who felt we should go in the opposite direction, keeping the seals and getting rid of the people.

You see, seals are easily spooked by humans, and they're protected from harassment by federal law. Some say that interaction with humans can even cause seal miscarriage.

One of several varieties of guilt-inducing sign

Background: a large group of people not going on the beach

The pro-seal movement was not able to get the beach closed off to people, but this was perhaps a blessing in disguise for them. If they had been allowed to install signs reading, "KEEP OFF THE BEACH", it would all but beg free-spirited types to trespass. Instead, they use moral suasion: the signs say something along the lines of, "You have the right to use the beach — we're not going to stop you — but we really sincerely ask you, nicely, not to."

I have never seen anyone set foot on the beach when the seals were present. The onlookers would have browbeaten them to within an inch of their lives.

One thing everyone agrees on is that the situation can't stay this way forever. Seals are seals and people are people and never the twain shall meet. One or the other has to go.

We're with the seals, though not because we're worried for them — scientists point out that there are plenty of seal habitats in the area. However, most of them are offshore, which brings us to our selfish motive: we want the seals to keep hanging out where we can watch them. Seeing wild animals in their natural habitat is a special treat, especially when conveniently located just steps from American Apparel and the Needle Nook. That's worth a lot more than a few extra feet of public beach.

I mean, just look at all the creatures great and small in this one spot:

Seals	Birds	Sea anemones	Seals
Other birds	Lobsters (in the boat)	Seals	Yet another bird
Mussels	seals	Wet tourists	seals

Nessie

Here's how the seals get into the water:

We later read that the beach beyond the cliffs was, in fact, clothing-optional — the largest such beach in the country. Due to the steep cliffs and limited accessibility, it's an ideal spot for one.

It's probably good for paraglider sales, too.

It's the day after Thanksgiving: time to put up the Christmas lights.

I don't like to use my camera's flash. This can be problematic when taking pictures at night.

Hilary and her dad and their two ghosts

If you're not careful, you end up with photos like the one on the left. However, every now and then you get a picture like the one on the right.

Although the sky behind the palm tree appears vaguely blue in the picture, it was pitch black at the time. Or at least it seemed that way. Apparently, the night sky is not really black, but rather a dark, dark blue. When you take a long-exposure photograph, the tiny bit of blue accumulates and it looks like twilight. Coupled with the other strange lighting effects that inevitably happen, the results can be a little surreal.

I've been experimenting with this lately, and it's easy to do if you just follow a few key steps:

(Seasoned photographers will roll their eyes here and say, "Duh!", but this section isn't for them. It's for the kind of person I recently was, who gets intimidated by the idea of turning their camera dial to anything other than the green "AUTO" setting)

• First, put your camera in the mode that lets you manually control aperture and shutter speed.
• Set the aperture to the smallest number available (like f/2 instead of f/8). This means that when the shutter opens, the hole will be as wide as it can possibly be, letting in as much light as possible. A repercussion of this will be a narrow depth of field — if the foreground is in focus, the background will be very blurry (and vice-versa). But that's probably okay; if anyone gives you trouble, just say it's your photographic style and tell them they don't understand art.
• Set the shutter time to the longest possible setting. You may be surprised to find that this is like 15 seconds.
• Don't even think about holding the camera while you take the picture, unless you want a blurry, streaky, ghosty image like that orange one at the top. Find something, anything, to rest the camera on.
• Don't touch the camera while the picture is being taken. No exceptions: don't even rest your finger on it out of fear that a gust of wind will knock it off the railing and 14 floors down to the sidewalk below. Even if you think you're not shaking it, you are indeed sending tiny vibrations into it every time your heart beats and they're going to ruin your picture. Hands off!
• Even pressing the button to take the picture is going to shake the camera and give your picture ddoouubbllee vviissiioonn. Consider using the camera's timer so you have a few seconds to let go before the shutter opens. And most importantly...
• Don't forget to turn off the flash!

Day...

...and night