Dia de los muertos… part 1…

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So why, you might well ask, when I just made such a big deal of my English relatives coming to visit, am I showing you a picture of a skull?

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Well, don’t let it worry your pretty little head!

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This is, in fact, part of the adventure…

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You will meet the relatives… and other people… but you will also learn about other cultures…

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But you will also see a whole bunch of skulls… and skeletons… and there are good reasons for that…

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But for now, let’s just say I had a long day in the hot sun…

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And I drank one big-ass margarita…

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And I am tired…

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And there are two more big days of this adventure to go… and I already took 200 pictures… most of which you are going to see… with more coming after that…

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So just sit back and enjoy the ride… and I will explain where it is taking us as we go…

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A couple of pictures of a baby lizard I took in my yard yesterday while I tell you about my newest adventure…

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Okay, these aren’t very good pictures. I should have gotten out the good camera… but the lizard was only about two inches long and it was so cute! Anyway, I am glad we finally finished up the pictures of my last adventure, because I am starting a new one today. Some of my English relatives are here in San Diego!!!

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If you want to learn about them beforehand, go back about one year… just a little over one year… to our big adventure in Europe. You can meet the relatives, and also see us doing some fun stuff… like: Seeing the Queen of England and the Royal Family, watching a scene from as James Bond movie being filmed right by Big Ben, exploring London,  seeing another movie scene being filmed in Liverpool, visiting the English countryside, running all around Paris, and going to both a castle and a concentration camp in Germany. And lots of other cool things.

The funny part of this new adventure is that, while I have no idea what we will be doing while they are here, when they leave in a few days, they are going to visit my mom, and they are driving the opposite direction on Highway One, the same road I just shared with you from my last adventure.

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That’s an abysmal color… a Pepto-abysmal color… ha… see what I did there?

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Okay, we have reached the end of my last adventure. We have, once again, visited the Bay Area, and seen many marvelous things… flowers and sunsets, dogs and babies, San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Morro Bay, and last… and definitely least… Los Angeles and its oh-so-annoying traffic.

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Leaving Morro Bay, I was still captivated by the beauty of my surroundings.

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Somewhere near Santa Barbara, I stopped at a view point take these two quick shots. This is where the wild… and cold… Pacific Ocean of Northern and Central California begin to give way to the more tropical beaches of Southern California.

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It also means that the fun part of the drive is pretty much over.

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So I amused myself by taking random pictures out of my car window while I battled the traffic… wait… what does that mean? I know it is a line from a Led Zeppelin song… I was raised on the Zep… but does that mean that you can rent a woman with big legs and no soul? Why would you do that?

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I didn’t get a picture of the driver, but it was a young guy with really long hair… which may or may not have been a wig. Let’s just assume that he shows up at parties and DJ’s classical rock songs or something like that.

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Hey… how did I end up in Korea… in the 1950’s??? Oh, wait… this is near where they filmed the M*A*S*H TV show… that explains it.

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That’s where I spotted this monstrosity… being driven, as well you might expect… by a well-endowed, very tan,. very blond woman… who may or may not actually have been blond. Well, that just about does it for…

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Wait… what the heck is that?

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I have no idea what that was… I am not a car guy… but, as I’m sure you guessed, it was driven by an extremely -douchie-looking, rich, white guy, who may or may not have worked for some movie studio or evil corporate law firm… and was weaving in and out, cutting people off… it was good to be back in Southern California…

Wait… no it wasn’t!

 

 

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Gee, Mr. Trump, thanks so much for helping me rediscover my white male guilt…

Wait… you know that was sarcasm, right? We’ve been to the moon, why can’t we invent a sarcasm font? But anyway, I grew up in Berkeley, California during the 60’s and 70’s. Believe me, I know liberal white male guilt.

But I was finally getting over it. I had convinced myself that, while white males have certainly brought more than their fair share of suffering to this planet down through history, my own conscience was clear… (hey, I just noticed that conscience is spelled: con-science… I wonder what the hell that means???)… I mean, I felt horrible about slavery, but I never owned a slave, and, being adopted, for all I know, my relatives fought on the right side of the civil war. I have never abused or exploited anybody of any race. I raised my daughters to judge people individually. I have always believed that women should be paid as well as men, and should be able to hold any job they want. And I actually thought we were making progress.

Now Trump has managed to not only find all of the white males that I was so ashamed to be associated with, but to coalesce them into an actual movement… a movement in the wrong direction, but a movement of sorts. So I guess I have to go back to feeling guilty about the very people that, by all rights, I should have the most in common with.

Oh boy.

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Your heart is the beating pulse of the universe that is you…

… sending light to the furthest reaches of all that you are… Make sure some of that light reaches Uranus…

Oh man… I crack me up…

Seriously, if you are getting older, have you backside checked regularly.

Wait… you know I meant by a doctor, right?

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Okay, these are the last otter pictures… I swear…

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But she has her baby riding on her tummy… and she is giving him a bath…

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It doesn’t get cuter than that, does it?

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And I even got a picture of them with a duck in the background.

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There was another mommy with a baby, but they were further away… and that other guy is stretching his legs… HA!

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Okay, bye bye, baby otter…

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And bye bye funny otter in the kelp blanket.

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Who spent the whole time I was there cleaning his face…

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Because otters are funny that way.

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She’s got the little baby otter on her tummy!!! How cute is that???

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So there I was, on my way home from my last adventure in the Bay Area, making a quick stop in Morro Bay on the California coast, just to get a few more pictures to share… and once again… you gotta love that crazy zoom lens!

Don’t worry, I think I have better pictures of the baby otter, but if I do, I am saving them for the next post, which will almost be the last post of this adventure.

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I was out under the crazy big, sea bird poop-covered rock that sits on the spit of land that protects Morro Bay.

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I admit it… I took a lot of pictures of the otters… like this one, where they are using the kelp as a raft. Hey, when you have a zoom lens, and there are otters, you are going to take a lot of pictures of the otters… they are freekin’ adorable.a 4

Look, that guy is still floating around wrapped in a kelp blanket.

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Hey, I tried to take some pictures of other things…

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Like the pelicans that were flying around… To be honest, it is not easy to take pictures of birds in flight with a zoom lens. Not even when the birds are big. But fortunately, my good camera takes and saves pictures at like 72 inches wide… so a lot of the time, I crop the images. Neither one of these pelicans was in the center of the photo, let’s just say.

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I took a pictures of some ducks. I ought to know what they are called. I am something of a bird watcher. But I don’t know. My mom would know.

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I even took a couple of pictures of some crabs.

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But mostly…

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… I took pictures of the otters… the mommy cleaning her baby, and Mr. Kelp Blanket cleaning his face…

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It’s summer… you otter be relaxing…

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Another advantage of me waking up at three in the morning to do the drive on the coastal highway, aside from getting to watch the sun come up with you, is that it allowed me to stop in more places to take pictures… look at that little guy in his kelp blanket.

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This time, I stopped in Morro Bay, a quaint little seaside village, just South of Hearst Castle and the beach with the elephant seals.

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The fog still hadn’t given up entirely in its battle with the sun.

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I walked out onto a little dock…

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Right beside the dock, I spotted this sleepy seal…

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He knew how to relax on a summer morning!

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I drove out along the strand, to the huge rock that looks over the entrance to the protected bay… notice all the sea bird droppings.

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That is where I took these pictures… and the ones in the next post or two… I think that a group of otters is called a ‘raft’… but feel free to Google that.

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But you have to love otters… no, really, you have to…

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Elephant seals… so put on your swim trunks… oh man… I crack me up…

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You may remember that I did this same drive on California’s famous Highway One under very similar circumstances not so very long ago. That time, this little beach near Hearst Castle was crowded with elephant seals.

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This time, it was nowhere near as crowded…

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Most of the females and young were gone… there were a few lonely bachelors hanging out though…

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That guy seems to be examining his own tail.

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Some of the males were still trying to establish dominance… but most of them were just lounging around.

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Can you spot any elephant seals in that photo? (To be fair, I’m not sure there are any… I may have moved on down the coast for this photo)…

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This is the middle of California… where the sea is still wild and cold, and the shore is still rocky in most places. We are not yet at the palm tree-infested white sand beaches of Southern California.

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But central and Northern California have a beauty all their own.

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Seriously, try to drive Highway One someday. At sunrise or sunset, you will not be disappointed. Maybe next time I am there, I will do it as the sun is going down over the Pacific, and get you some pictures of that.

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Still coasting…

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Ha… see what I did there? Because I am still showing pictures of the central coast of California as the sun was coming up.

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I guess you get some idea, by how many pictures I took, just how often I stopped at little pullouts.  I would leave the car running, walk to the cliff edge, and snap a quick photo in each direction.

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And it really was a stunning morning.

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And once again, because I was on a narrow road perched on the side of a mountain range, I actually got to see the sun come up multiple times, as it peeked out between gaps in the hills.

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The fog was very cooperative as well. Sometimes I was driving through it, and sometimes I was way up above it.

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I’m not sure if those tiny little waves down there… which are not tiny at all… give you a true perspective of how far above the water I was in some of these shots.

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Here comes our friend the sun again!

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I like that one.

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Well, this is almost it for the cliff part of the drive…

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Next, we will be getting back down to sea level… and seeing some of the things that live in the sea…

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I hope I see you there.

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