I arrived home last Saturday evening totally exhausted from my trip to San Diego. I didn’t realized just how tired I was until Sunday when I woke up with fuzzy thinking and sore muscles everywhere. I don’t think it was from physical activities as much as from over-stimulation.

The room I had at the Sheraton Harbor Hotel looked out onto the water where I could watch people walking briskly along the edge of the bay. In the water were jet-skis, sail boats, Hornblower cruise vessels, Navy ships, and tug boats. The hotel is directly across from the Navy Air Station with helicopters coming and going all day long. Standing on my balcony, I was suddenly aware of how much I miss living near a body of water as I did growing up, and later in Virginia.

The first day I was there, I took my first Uber ride to the local San Diego Shell Club annual Shell Show in a building at Balboa Park. This show had exhibits prepared by the members, and a room full of dealers who had shells for sale.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After viewing the exhibits, I found a bench outdoors and ate the lunch I brought with me. I enjoyed the architecture of the walkways with the columns, being able to see the matching shape from the arches on the other side of the walk.

On Monday there was a field trip to the San Diego zoo also located in Balboa Park in an area with hills and ravines. I saw many of the large animals on a zoo bus ride designed to give us an overall tour of the place. The leader suggested we get ice cream after the ride before we separated to explore on our own. I enjoyed a Hagen Das dark chocolate covered, chocolate ice cream bar at 11:00 in the morning.

The zoo has many smaller animals from around the world, including beautiful birds which often had to be located hidden in the trees in their enclosures.

One of the ladies I was walking with could rattle off the Latin names of all the plants. Of course I had to see the five giraffes, two of them only a year or two old.

Tuesday we visited the Scripps Aquarium in La Jolla with its spectacular displays of underwater creatures including colorful mollusks that don’t have hard shells called nudibranches, fish, and other sea creatures. Then we had time to get lunch and visit shops.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Conchologists of America convention (COA) – the reason I was in San Diego – got going on Wednesday, with three days of short presentations about shells, interspersed with silent auctions, six of them, where attendees could bid on packages of shells and related items. I don’t generally buy shells because my collection is predominately beach collected, but I enjoy the silent auctions.

The Welcome Party Wednesday night began with a parade and photos of those who had decorated a hat for the occasion. I wore my head-gear which I detailed last week in this blog.

Also on Wednesday, my roommate arrived from Arizona. I met her last year in Key West and we talked about sharing a room at the next COA. It was wonderful to make a new friend and have someone to talk to. She had driven from Arizona, which added a whole new dimension to the trip. The vibe in San Diego is full of energy, people walking up and down the streets, eating lunch, and shopping in the older section of town, like Stockton would like to have. (We have the old buildings but not the tourists.)

Notable presentations included two by a man who has been diving and collecting in the waters of Alaska and the Aleutians for the last forty years. He has found that shells that occur all along the coast of Alaska stop suddenly at a point in the Bering Sea where the water temperature becomes two degrees colder.

Several talks showed results from DNA analysis that is starting to shed light on how land snails in the Bahamas migrated from island to island and resulted in new species.

We even saw video of a devise used to find and bring to the surface mollusks that live in the deep sea and are rarely seen.

Thursday night featured an oral auction where we watched attendees bid on rare and expensive shells. Before I left town Saturday afternoon, I cruised through the bourse, where sea shell dealers from all over the world displayed their finest treasures. I found the table which had an assortment of shells for $5 each, and selected a handful of shells I don’t have or have never seen before.

Next year COA will be at Captive Island, Florida in June. Hopefully, I will find time to reorganize my collection in the next nine months.