Monterey Bay & 17 Mile Drive
This morning Emily, Dawn & I headed to Monterey Bay. We started out fairly early because the tide pools in the bay are full of life but you need to get to them while the tide is in.
First off though we drove through Cannery Row. This is quite a famous part of town due to the fact that John Steinbeck based quite a few of his stories in the location and he lived there for a time. The area is so named, because of all the sardine canning that went on. Now it is much more a tourist destination and the Monterey Bay Aquarium is located at the end of the Row. Dawn needed coffee so we dropped her off and went round the block a few times. I was surprised to see that almost every cyclist wasn’t wearing a helmet – Emily says that it isn’t a requirement to wear helmets in most US States and if people do choose to wear them, they normally wear the ‘baby’ helmet which is completely useless anyway.
We parked at Lovers Point which now has a nice park area on the point which looks out over the Bay. The tide pools were fascinating – seaweed that sparkled with an opalescent sheen, clever little red spotted crabs, a profusion of multi coloured urchin type things and star fish (purple and lurid orange).
Emily had said that if I was lucky we might see a Californian Sea Otter swimming just off the coast. These are the otters that swim on their backs with a rock on their bellies to crack open mussels & other difficult food. We had come at the point from the other side when Emily quickly called me over – there was a sea otter curled up on a rock a little more than a metre away from us! It looked a little sluggish and we were concerned that it was ill – but while Emily called the Aquarium it unfurled itself and swam out into the ocean where it rolled around gracefully in the water for a while grooming and then slipped off into the seaweed. We were later told at the Aquarium that it’s not unusual to see males sluggish & beaten up during mating season so we didn’t need to worry.
After all that excitement it was time for lunch and an icecream – after all, you can’t go to the beach and not have an icecream! I tried a Rootbeer Float which was quite tasty but I don’t think I’ll ever be mad on the Sarsparilla flavour. Also a Tootsie Roll, which is a Tootsie Pop covered with hard boiled lolly. This one was chocolate.
Our next destination was Pebble Beach & 17 Mile Drive – golfing enthusiasts out there should recognise the name Pebble Beach and 17 Mile Drive is a big loop around that very very trendy area. I didn’t spot any pop stars but some of the houses we saw were just enormous. What was more spectacular was the part of the drive that wound its way along the coast line and then once we got up high and could look out over the whole of Monterey – the community of Pebble Beach is situated in the preserved Del Monte forest which is a cypress forest whitened by the sun & the sea water and twisted into fabulous shapes. I was also introduced to the plant ‘poison oak’ but from a distance! The leaves look a lot like oak leaves but it grows out of the ground on thin stalks rather than like a tree. The oil contained in the leaves causes most people to come out in a nasty rash.
As we drove through the town I noticed all these chinese lanterns hung everywhere – apparently they are part of a butterfly and Chinese Lantern Festival; a remnant of a traditional Chinese festival that the Chinese population brought with them when they first came as part of a migrant labour force. But now the festival also coincides with the migration of the Monarch butterflies which goes straight through Monterey. At one time the butterflies flew in clouds so thick Dawn remembers it being difficult to see bushes on which they landed, but now, with pesticides and other commercial crop problems the numbers are far less.
Emily & I raced into the Monterey Bay Aquarium at about 3pm – just in time to see the feeding of the penguins and then the sea otters. The Aqaurium was full of people and lots of children as it’s peak holiday season here. Nevertheless it had many impressively organised exhibitions – my favourites included the Jetty Life Exhibition, the Sea Coast bird exhibition (all the birds are real and walking around in their ‘habitat’ not more than an arms length away from viewers, they’ve all been rescued at some point by the Aquarium) and the Octopus Exhibition (two great big red ones, no photos though it was kept dark and no flashes allowed).
On the way home we stopped to buy artichokes and cherries – Dawn was determined that I try the local specialty of steamed artichokes with melted butter & mayonnaise. This was an interesting taste experience – I think it is an acquired taste but one that I could acquire without too much difficulty!
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