Monterey California
July 6 – 9, 2014
We headed down from Yosemite Lakes CG via the Priest Grade
on 120. It wasn’t as bad as we had
anticipated and we had left early enough that there wasn’t so much traffic
coming up as we feared. The traffic
going northbound was bad, maybe people returning home after the July 4th
weekend but southbound toward Monterey was OK.
We arrived at Monterey Dunes RV Park and pulled into our site, #52. It is a nice park, and sites are somewhat separated
by trees and bushes. We walked
across the street and about 1/3 mile down to the beach. The Pacific Ocean and beaches are different
than the Atlantic in our experience.
There are no shells or rocks washing up like we found on the East Coast.
On Monday July 7 we went into Monterey to the Monterey Bay
Aquarium. It is a big place and has
exhibits on various tropical fish, jelly fish, cuttlefish, squid, sea otters
and others. The colors were
amazing. We also went to a short talk
about Great White sharks as well as one another about creatures under the
sea.
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| Jelly Fish |
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| Jelly Fish |
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| Ocean Sunfish (looks like only half but that's all there is) |
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| Hammerhead Shark |
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| Various tropical fish |
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| Various tropical fish |
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| Katy in a clamshell |
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| Cuttlefish |
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| Sea Otter |
We took the free trolley to Fisherman’s Wharf and around
downtown Monterey. We stopped at the
Café LaStrada for coffee and snacks.
Very relaxing.
Tuesday we headed down Highway 1 toward Big Sur and San
Simeon. Since we were going south we were on the outside lane where we could
see out to the ocean. It was a twisty
turny road, with some grades, but it was a beautiful drive.
Just north of San Simeon was a vista point
(scenic turnout) called Elephant Seal
Beach. There were LOTS of elephant seals
laying on the beach, “barking”, fighting, and swimming . The males grow to 16 ft long and 5,000
pounds. They were very interesting to watch.
San Simeon was another beautiful area with a very scenic
bay. We could see the Hearst Castle up
on the hill but we didn’t tour it. The
bay had a long pier going out into the ocean so we walked out on it. There were several bottlenose dolphins swimming
in the bay. We watched for quite a
while.
Wednesday we called Princess Monterey Whale Watching and
made reservations for the afternoon cruise.
Since we got to Fisherman’s Wharf a little early we went to Café
LaStrada for coffee and sat on the plaza awhile. We sat on the top deck of the boat, The
Greatland, where we could see all around.
After a 45 minute or so ride out into the ocean we saw a whale blow out
his blowhole and then surface and show his tail fluke as he re-entered the
water. The blow hole spray was the clue
that a whale was about to surface. We
saw 2 whales in the area and watched them for about 45 minutes. The whales we saw were humpback whales. One
even breached, coming totally out of the water.
It was a really cool experience to be able to see the whales.
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| Monterey Bay Waterfront |
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| HumpbackWhale |
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