Sunsets and SeaWorld on a San Diego Holiday

Holiday trip week in San Diego, working through the last days of 2007. Yesterday evening the sun dropped straight into the Pacific from where we're staying — rooftops and palm trees flat black under an orange band that ran the whole width of the horizon.

Today was SeaWorld, over in Mission Bay Park. Dolphin show first, in the pool with the fake lighthouse and the cracked mission arch — a bottlenose went fully vertical to tag a flag hung a couple stories up, and at one point four or five of them were standing on their tails across the tank at the same time. Then Shamu Stadium, where the first dozen rows were solid blue ponchos, so the soak zone is apparently not a joke. One orca came out of the water nose-first and toppled sideways in a wall of spray; another slid up onto the ledge with a trainer on its back, close enough to the rail that half the front row already had cameras up before it landed. The park's been running here since 1964, and it still packs the bleachers on a gray December afternoon.