Torrey Pines

I'm going to proceed with my San Diego posts as if I'm systematically marching northward up the coast, but my actual itinerary was a bit more complicated.  After La Jolla on Friday afternoon, I made it to Torrey Pines for a wonderful sunset from the top of the bluffs, but then headed north to Carlsbad for the night.  The next morning was spent working my way south through Carlsbad, Encinitas, and Del Mar, before I ended up back at Torrey Pines and Black's Beach for a few hours before hightailing it to the airport.  So some of these shots are from late Friday afternoon, some from Saturday afternoon.

AERIAL VIEW

Torrey Pines lies just north of La Jolla and includes a spectacular stretch of bluffs and one of the least developed stretches of coastline in the county.  Above the bluffs are trails, a golf course, and a dedicated gliderport for folks inclined to thrown themselves off the cliffs with artificial wings.

The distinction between sea cliffs and bluffs is fuzzy, but I tend to reserve cliffs for bedrock coastlines that plunge into deeper water or to an eroded rocky platform. And I use bluffs for steep slopes of more erodible material, usually with a real beach at the bottom.  Sunset Cliffs and La Jolla were sea cliffs.  Torrey Pines and the rest of northern San Diego County (subsequent posts) are bluffs.

And impressive bluffs they are, with enormous landslides, some a hundred years old, some much more recent.  The beach below these bluffs, which we'll visit in the next post, is Black's Beach.  As usual, there are (or will soon be) more pictures of all of these places on my other blog:  hshipman.