Ocean Beach panorama

After spending a couple of weeks in San Diego in April 1993, I decided to stay. I never went back to Texas until several months later. Just stayed.

One thing that attracted me to San Diego was the geographic diversity. There are beaches at sea level, 300-foot cliffs overlooking some beaches, Cowles Mountain which rises to 1,593 feet above sea level, and everything in between. Few places where I have been offer such geographic diversity—Olympic Peninsula in Washington comes to mind, the State of Texas, and Southern California. San Diego, though, encompasses a mere 372.40 square miles. Texas has 268,581 square miles; Southern California, 56,512 square miles; and Olympic Peninsula, about 3,600 square miles. You can see that San Diego offers a lot of geographic variety that is easily accessible within minutes instead of hours or days.

One of the great places to experience beautiful beaches and seaside cliffs is Ocean Beach. I recently was there during the lowest tide I have ever experienced in San Diego. Since it was an extraordinarily clear day, I made my way to the cliffs overlooking the beach and got several beautiful pictures of Ocean Beach, the pier, the tide pools, and the beach. Using Photoshop CC’s Photomerge function, I created a beautiful panorama from six pictures (click on the picture for a better view):

The Ocean Beach Fishing Pier juts out 1,971 feet into the Pacific Ocean, making it the fourth longest pier on the West Coast but the longest concrete pier.

For an older blog post about the Ocean Beach Fishing Pier, see Ocean Beach Pier—The longest, second longest, and fourth longest pier on the West Coast.

If you don’t have a wide-angle or fisheye lens when you need it, simply take lots of overlapping pictures and then stitch them together to create your panorama. Most photo editing programs, including the free ones, have a stitching or photomerge function.

This post approved by
Zoey the Cool Cat

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, BRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Oceanside Pier — San Diego County’s second-longest pier

If you read my most recent post (Ocean Beach Fishing Pier — The longest, second longest, and fourth longest pier on the West Coast), you might remember that we have five piers in San Diego County.

The Ocean Beach Fishing Pier is the longest at 1,971 feet. Not too far behind it, at 1,942 feet (or 1,954 feet, depending on who you believe), is the Oceanside Pier. It was built in 1888 at what is now Wisconsin Avenue but was destroyed by storms in the winter of 1890. It was rebuilt in 1893 in its current location at Pier View Way. However, the current pier, the sixth Oceanside Pier, was built in 1987. Mother and Father Nature keep destroying in with their winter storms.

Since I recently was in Oceanside doing a home inspection nearby, I took some time out afterwards to explore the Oceanside beach and pier.

I came home with some pictures that I really like, and since my wise old grandmother taught me to share, I’m sharing!

I always find beach-front homes fascinating, to see how individual people express their beach lifestyle.

The architecture includes small beach cottages built long ago to large two-story homes with interesting architecture.

I stayed long enough to get some sunset pictures.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Ocean Beach Pier — The longest, second longest, and fourth longest pier on the West Coast

When I find conflicting information about relatively recent events and things, it really makes me wonder about stories from 2,000 years ago when most stories were passed around verbally. We all know how stories get changed each time they are told, even by the same person!

One local conflict involves the Ocean Beach Fishing Pier:

    

The Ocean Beach Fishing Pier was opened on July 2, 1966. The Y at the end of the pier extends 360 feet to the south and 193 feet to the north. When it opened it promised to be one of the premier piers in the state, with nearly a mile of railing space for fisherpeople. The pier jutted out into the Point Loma kelp beds, purported to be one of the finest fishing areas in Southern California. The first fish caught was reported to be a sunfish, but since sunfish are freshwater fish, after-the-fact reports presume that it was a perch of some sort. The second fish caught was a gray shark.

There used to be a sign at the entrance to the pier that said “Welcome to the longest pier on the West Coast.” A storm tore it down in January 2010 and I don’t think it’s been replaced, perhaps because the Ocean Beach pier is NOT the longest pier on the West Coast. At 1,971 feet, however, it definitely is long.

Longer piers on the West Coast include the San Mateo Fishing Pier in San Francisco Bay (4,135 feet), Berkeley Pier in San Francisco Bay (3,000 feet), and Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf in Santa Cruz (2,745 feet). That would make the Ocean Beach pier the fourth longest.

However, in order to get the Ocean Beach pier closer to the top, some sources discount both the San Mateo Fishing Pier and the Berkeley Pier because they are in San Francisco Bay and not in the Pacific Ocean. That makes the Ocean Beach pier the second longest pier on the West Coast AND in the Pacific Ocean.

But wait! There’s more!

By discounting wooden piers along with San Francisco Bay piers, we can get the Ocean Beach pier to numero uno: It is the longest concrete pier in the Pacific Ocean on the West Coast.

In addition to the Ocean Beach pier at #2 (using length of all piers in the Pacific Ocean on the West Coast), San Diego County also has the fourth longest (Oceanside pier at 1,942 feet), the ninth longest (Imperial Beach pier at 1,491 feet), the eighteenth longest (Scripps Pier in La Jolla at 1,090 feet), and the twenty-fifth longest (Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach in San Diego at 872 feet). We are a pier happy people here!

The Ocean Beach Fishing Pier is often battered by high waves during storms because of how the ocean floor is shaped and the direction the beach faces.

Quite often the pier is closed because some waves can get so high that they actually crash over the pier. Don’t need any Zonies being swept out to sea. (Zonies are tourists from Arizona; they inundate San Diego from Memorial Day to Labor Day, our Tourist Season.) Many people go to Ocean Beach when the pier is closed just to watch the huge waves. Best wave watching in the County!

The way the ocean floor is shaped, as well as the direction the beach faces, means there is great surfing on both sides of the pier, and those surfers are out there in good weather and bad.

For some reason the waves are supposed to be extraordinarily high today and tomorrow. Not sure why because it’s bright and sunny here, but I will be going out to Ocean Beach to check on the waves and, hopefully, get some flash videos if the waves are dancing high.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!