We made the relatively long (about 2 hours) diversion south to hit up Monterey as it was reported to be a beautiful place to go see and supposedly has a very nice, or at least well known, aquarium. We stayed maybe half an hour north of Monterey and got a reasonably early start in the morning in hopes of snagging free parking as directed by some visit-Monterey website I was on the night before. The mission was a success and we got street side parking (#1 on the map) just north of the aquarium and the majority of the interesting walking attractions.
The basic plan for the day was just to wander around, visit the aquarium and do a bit of the drive along the coast. Our walking tour got sidetracked by the sighting of a sea lion right by where we parked. We watched it for a while and I attempted (but failed) to get pictures. We didn’t get very far before the second distraction arose – Hopkins Beach (#2) was full of harbor seals asking to have their pictures taken. We stood around for a while watching them and taking pictures, and some video, which someday I’ll learn how to post on this site (which is funny considering that the original reason I got a website was to share video from the camcorder I was aiming to buy).
We walked down past the aquarium and through cannery row stopping once for chocolate, once or twice for clam chowder (I remembered how much I like that stuff. Janet, not as much.) and occasionally to use the ocean overlooking balconies of various establishments. The first of these was right at the aquarium (#3)and the second was near some hotel (#4). The pictures of the sea lions in the kelp came from the aquarium and the pictures of the kayakers landing came from the hotel. We spent a good while at each place just watching and trying to spot the various wildlife.
There are three structures that jut out into the bay from Monterey – the first one that we came upon was the Coast Guard Pier which is where all the sea lion pictures came from. The seals were completely covering the pier beyond the path where people could walk. (#5)
The second structure is Fisherman’s Wharf (#6) which is the very commercialized pier with lots of restaurants, souvenir shops and tours for hire – and surprisingly, a place I have zero pictures of. It’s possible that we missed out on going on a whale watching tour – from the sounds of it, it was a perfect time. We did sample a few clam chowders and decided to get some for lunch (or at least I did… Janet got a turkey sandwich, completely violating the concept of eating seafood on a wharf), thus starting a brief soup-in-bread-bowl trend for the rest of the trip. The third structure (#7) is maybe the ‘old’ fisherman’s wharf, I’m not sure of it’s title, but it appeared to be where you went if you wanted to go into an old barn and buy bulk fresh fish.
After the walking tour, and spending far too much time taking bad pictures of various wildlife, we were a bit late to actually do the aquarium, so that was skipped. I’m not sure if that was a regrettable decision or not – though we did discover later that there was a combo-pass which would have provided a pretty good price for the aquarium and some SF sights had we known about it earlier.
The walking tour was followed by the driving tour. We skipped the Pebble Beach drive, largely because I have issue with the idea of paying to drive around rich people’s homes, and headed south to drive along the coast for a while right during sunset, which was quite beautiful (more-so than the pictures really tell).
PS – Janet was editor on the gallery, so some of the captions are hers.
Copy-pasted from google maps (to give some credit). Little numbers added by me.
This could have been us, had this been a kayaking trip and had we had kayaks.
Harbor seals at Hopkins Beach
Harbor seal coming in for a surf landing
Apparently planking is a natural state of the harbor seal.
You can barely see them, but the large dark spots are otters in the kelp bed. The one to the left is facing the camera.
Some kinda bird... I'm just happy I got a picture mid-flight.
Again... if this were a different trip this could have been us
One difference between the sea lion and a harbor seal is the "ear flap" which you can see in this picture. The harbor seals (like the one planking in the earlier photo) have "ear holes" without the external flap.
Nap time is over.
Very suspicious.
The sound that a seal make is known as a bark. Their barks are very similar to the bark of a dog. Rather than sounding like 'arf,' it sounds more like 'ort.' ...there was massive 'orting' going on here.
See the little guy looking at the camera? Mid-pier near the bottom. Did you know that a group of seals is called a "pod"... an orting pod
...some still shy birds
Some boats in the bay. 'Twas an overcast kind of day.
We walked out to the end of this wharf, home to the Monterey Fish Co...and more conveniently, a bathroom.
Jyes, this is a good picture.
I have no idea what this bird is but it looks like it has a garbanzo bean for a head.
This is mah sexeh look.
We decided to drive South of Monterey Bay to check out the coast line. This is South of Monterey just past Pebble Beach and heading towards Big Sur.
Bridge along California coast heading towards Big Sur
View of Big Sur looking South
The view from Big Sur looking back North along the coast. The sun was going down and the overcast sky disappeared to allow for some nice photos.
