Advertisement
We spent this whole week in California. From Lake Tahoe, we drove south towards Yosemite, but the east entrance was still closed for the winter, so we headed for the coast. We spent some time in Monterey, south of San Francisco, and planned on driving down the coast, through Big Sur, to San Diego. Monterey has whale-watching trips - very cool. That morning, some orcas (killer whales) had separated a grey whale from her calf. It was another David Attenborough/Nature moment, but we didn’t see the actual kill. Apparently after a kill, the orcas ‘celebrate’ by jumping, diving and showing off the carcass. So we saw the same three or four whales, coming up over and over again near the shoreline. We went to another spot, and saw several humpback whales breaching. The tour operator warned us not to expect this for every whale-watching trip; we were very lucky to see the first batch of orcas; the second batch of humpback whales was a bonus. And it wasn’t over yet - we then saw dolphins playing in the water, having a feeding frenzy. Our trip was supposed to last about 3 hours; we were gone about 5 hours.
From Monterey,
we drove down the coast; our next stop was San Diego. Another animal highlight this week - seeing the snow leopards up and about at the San Diego Zoo. Snow leopards are very rare, and it was unusual to see them moving about. They are beautiful animals, and we were very lucky to see them.
Next towards Death Valley National Park...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.295s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 76; dbt: 0.0875s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.4mb
Joe
non-member comment
California coast
Well guys, your pics make me remember that wonderful time I spent in Monterey when I was young & fresh ;=)) Must have been almost 40 years back, some time in 1982. I'll have to go back there some time!