Sunset at San Pedro

I spent the 2nd day of 2014 at San Pedro, a place I had never visited before. I took too many photos to show at once, so maybe I'll break them down into several posts. These show the end of the day, sunset at Point Fermi Park, a beautiful spot with a clear view of Catalina across the channel. After seeing the lighthouse, Fort MacArthur, kite flyers,seals, tide pools, ruins of what I thought was the Sunken City (but wasn't- I returned the next day to finally see that), it was getting late and the sun was beginning to set. Of course I had to wait for that! As it turns out, some unusual sights were seen!

An airplane flying low in front of Catalina.

A light on Catalina. Probably the sun's reflection off a water tank or other large structure.

Looks like Hawaii, doesn't it? The temperature was 82 degrees that day, with a nice breeze.

The sun!

Now that's unusual! At first I thought it was an airplane coming up from the horizon.

But no! It's coming up from the sea. And there are no boats around...

My guess is it's a missile launched from a submarine.

Can you see the white dot in front of the dark cloud in the upper left area? That's not a dust speck. I think it's probably a drone. I saw several when I was at the beach.

You could feel the temperature drop noticeably after the sun dropped below the horizon.

Soon the show was over and it was time to leave. Home was only 25 miles away, but I had rush hour traffic waiting for me!

And here's a composite picture showing closeups of the objects I saw.