Isak Dinesen wrote, "The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea." He was right so off we went to Oceanside for a day with the magical elixir.

It wasn't warm enough to frolic at the beach so we decided it would be a museum day! "The California Surf Museum serves as an international repository and resource center on the lifestyle sport of surfing by capturing, preserving, and chronicling its art, culture and heritage for the education and enjoyment of current and future generations."
Ancient Hawaii developed the act of waveriding more than 600 years before European contact. When Captain Cook christened the Sandwich Islands in 1778, his ship’s physician Dr. William Anderson noted the act of waveriding in his ship’s log. He described it as what appeared to be a “supreme pleasure.”A Princess, three Princes, a Duke and a Hawaiian Royal Minister’s grandson would be the stately stars who introduced standup surfriding to Europe, Australia and the United States. It began in 1885, when three Hawaiian Princes attending college at St. Matthews Hall military school in San Mateo, fashioned surfboards from redwood and took them out in the waves at Santa Cruz Bay, becoming the first official surfers in the Golden State. Their surfing foray into the west coast waters was an historic event in California history, covered nationwide in the newspapers and magazines of the time.
Great grandson of King Kalakaua’s minister, George Freeth, was one of the finest surfers of his era. Invited by real estate and train baron Henry Huntington, Freeth’s public demonstrations of surfing along Southern California’s coast beginning in 1907, marked the inception of organized wave riding on the mainland United States. The rest they say is history!
We marveled at the exhibit, Expanded Timeline of Surfboards. What an amazing collection of surfboards chronicling the history of surfing.
It wasn't just photos of these incredible artifacts, the actual boards were there for us to inspect up close. Wow.




I was especially intrigued by Alan "Pal Al" Nelson's travel board. He built this board in 2000, designing it as a way to cope with the expense and challenge of air travel (he had a home in Costa Rica and surfed the world).
"The exhibit tells the story of Bethany losing her left arm to a Tiger shark while surfing in Kauai, how she survived that attack through the help of Alana Blanchard and her family, and the determination exhibited by Bethany to not only recover from the incident, but return to surfing a mere three weeks after the attack. But she didn’t just return to surfing – she returned to competitive surfing Her story and her positive outlook on life have caused her to be in demand as a motivational speaker. She has inspired countless people to overcome adversity and not give up on their dreams."
Lunch was al freezing at the Mission Pacific Hotel's The Cafe.
Heaters and lap blankets made dining outdoors perfect.
Museum Stop #2 was at the Seabird's Oceanside Museum of Art West for the current art show. Inspired by Diane Wilson’s novel The Seed Keeper, this exhibition explores the concept of seeds as both a material presence and a powerful metaphor—an archive of memory, resilience, and future. Presented in collaboration with the Oceanside Public Library as part of the community-wide program The Big Read, the exhibition extends the novel’s themes into a visual and spatial experience. In Indigenous worldviews, seeds carry more than sustenance; they hold stories, languages, ancestral knowledge, and responsibilities passed orally from generation to generation.



A brisk stroll introduced us to something either of us had seen in this Southern California beach- habitat restoration with beautiful wildflowers within its protective fencing.


This was my first time discovering the Oceanside Rock Garden. Based on the proclamation on this rock, "I was the first rock!", it has been here for almost six years. Wild.




Some creations made me think while most made me smile.