We have reached the end of my most recent adventure… except for this post, and two more, that deal with the zoo part of the adventure on the first day, before I even started driving north.
Seriously, if you are ever in San Diego, and are thinking about going to the zoo, look into the animal experience thing.
So, after my mishap in the tidepools on Monterey Peninsula, I decided to forgo more sightseeing on the coast and head straight to the Bay Area. I had a dinner planned at the Circus Pub, an English pub just down the hill from my mom’s house. I was waiting with one friend for another friend to show up, and glanced out the window and saw a third friend and his family walking up to the pub. That is how I ended up having dinner with three guys that I have known for decades.
While I waited for everyone else to get off work, I killed some time down by the bay.
I think there is a bridge over there somewhere.
I go to that park every time I am in the Bay Area, because it is a dog park, and I miss my dogs. So I pet other dogs. I am funny that way.
I told you there was a bridge over there.
I decided to stay with one of my friends, because my 97-year-old mother was still recuperating from a granddaughter visit.
My friend Chris got a new toy.
Yeah, must be nice. I have never even had a new car all to myself.
This thing was straight out of the Halo video games.
I have known Chris since he moved to the street I grew up on when we were just kids.
He makes really good giant pancakes stuffed with fruit and nuts. I also made him and his wife listen to some of my podcast episodes. That was fun.
So was having two dogs spend most of the night in my bed.
Yup. So, that is almost it for this adventure. I have a couple of videos and one more post, about the zoo adventure that started this trip off. See you soon.
I love that photo, taken on the last day of the Highway One part of the adventure where I explored the coastline of California.
One my way back to Highway One, I stopped once more on the Monterey Peninsula, just to get some shots of the tidepools.
A curled-up anemone. Do they decorate themselves? Is it camouflage? Or do bits of shell and small rock just end up sticking to them?
Somebody should Google that.
Hermit crabs in a small pool.
Baby kelp and… uh… other plants.
I found a spot where the tidepools were surrounded by an almost alien landscape. It wasn’t easy to move around.
And there were so many crabs scuttling about that between the waves you could hear their pointy little feet clickety-clacking on the rocks all around you.
Free range starfish.
And then my foot hit a slimy patch as I stepped over a rock, and I slipped, and ended up jammed between some big rocks. I twisted both ankles, and wrenched my right knee, while getting my legs all torn up by barnacles. But the camera was fine. I saved the camera. And only got a little wet.
So I limped back to the car, popped some Ibuprofen, and headed through town, back towards the highway.
Still very early morning on day 5 of the adventure. Still doing that ’17 mile drive’ scenic road.
That is, until I got distracted by some rocks.
Most of the rocks I had seen so far on this adventure had had the common curtesy to not be piled on top of other rocks.
But not anymore.
Yes, I know that rock stacking is a thing now. You see it all over the place. Californians seem to love it. I guess this is where they go to learn how to do it. Rock Stacking University… good old RSU… home of the Fighting Rockpiles.
This cormorant was unimpressed.
As was this seagull.
It was a beautiful morning, and no one was awake but me and the birds.
Just enjoying the view.
There are a bunch of seals on that rock, just waking up.
Seals and cormorants. Gotta love the telephoto lens.
There is this thing at the tip of the Monterey Peninsula called ‘The 17 mile drive’. It cost about ten dollars, and passes beside some of the most exclusive private dwellings, fancy golf courses, wild coastline and beautiful pine forests in California. Rich people can afford to invest in mutant cyborg guard deer. Private security officers… like me… are for poor people.
Rich people are pretty particular about who gets to use their golf courses, but they will let the coyotes play through, early in the morning, before the courses are open.
I got up before the sunrise, you know, like I do on my adventures, to get good pictures for you to look at. I had to use the flash on my camera to some of these photos.
But that made the Spanish Moss even more beautiful.
It was too foggy for sunrise shots, but the other thing I like about getting up early is that you learn more about the animals.
I saw thousands of cormorants going off to find breakfast, and then find a nice rock to spend all day doing their synchronized cleaning rituals, and covering the rock in white guano.
You should really Google cormorants. They used them for fishing in China in a very unusual way.
They were also practicing their formation flying.
Nature is weird.
A lonely tree.
The 17 mile drive curved inland, into a mist-filled forest.
Day 5 of the adventure was off to a good start.
This place had some serious ambience.
I mean, if you like nature.
The secret to getting good photos of creepy yellow-eyed cyborg deer, is to get them with a flash early in the morning in fog.
Still trying to get that perfect photo of a crashing wave. Also, if you are new here, this is not a travel blog. I am just caught up on a little side trip. We will be getting back to the weird stuff soon enough.
The Monterey area right off Highway One has a lot to do in a small area. People tend to get caught up in the main town area, with the touristy stuff like Cannery Row and the famous aquarium.
But I have done all that stuff and I do not travel like a tourist.
And if you keep going past the town to the end of the peninsula, there is more to see that fit in with my agenda.
The whole of Monterey Bay is a crazy mishmash of wild, rocky coastline and marine habitat.
That is why there is an aquarium and the Monterey Oceanographic Institute.
We are still in the afternoon of the 4th day of the adventure, with me waiting for my hotel room to be ready.
So I explored, and took pictures.
And when my room was ready, I dropped off my stuff and explored some more.
But this will be the last post about day 4.
Don’t get your hopes up. I got up before sunrise to start exploring again.
So we will still be seeing pictures of the sea and rocks and birds and whatever.
Speaking about birds, these pelicans are winding down their day. See, I told you they do synchronized flying. When they fly in a line like that, really low over the waves, and pop up, one after another, to go over a wave, it is awesome to watch.
Sea life means sea birds. Okay, goodbye, day 4!
In the morning, the adventure continues, and we will see lots of weird stuff…
Pouring My Art Out by Arthur H. Browne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Based on a work at https://pouringmyartout.wordpress.com/. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Pouring My Art Out 