It's Monday, July 2nd, and it's 0600 here in the Holiday Inn Express in Monterey. Not quite in vacation mode yet but, getting there. There were a lot of good things about the Fairmont in San Francisco. First and foremost, the beds in our room there. Exceptionally comfortable and did not hurt my back. The bed here in the Holiday Inn isn't bad, just not nearly as good as the Fairmonts.
OK, on with the days blog... was a memorable day and was able to take another item off of my bucket list - whale watching!
While Rosie and Conor leisurely awoke, I went down to the lobby for a hot breakfast at 0630. Pretty good spread for a Holiday Inn. Hot, cold, juices, fruits, pastries... all good. Took some bananas back up to the room for my 2 traveling partners and before heading back down to finish their breakfasts, Rosie dialed up the Monterey Bay Whale Watch Company (MBWWC) and booked 3 spots on their 0900, 4hr trip to go chase leviathans!
After breakfast we loaded up in the SUV with all of our camera gear and drove out to Old Fisherman's Wharf. Wasn't that far a drive, maybe 5mins. We'd considered walking but, would have taken too long as we were cutting it a bit close timing wise. I'd gotten some directions from the lady who took our reservations but, being unfamiliar with the area, those directions weren't very precise. Eventually found parking in a garage for $7/day just off Washington Street and we hoofed it across several busy roads over into the Wharf's parking lot area and onto the pier. A good stretch of the leg.
Fortunately, there were other small families all 'quick' walking onto the pier in search of the 2 or 3 excursion companies heading out at 0900 to find whales. As we walked out to the end of the pier past most commercial establishments still closed at this time of the morning, we found our charter on the right (starboard side to sailors) side of the pier and the medium sized shed where business was conducted. We were last in to buy and pick up our tickets. Can't remember exactly what we paid - most any amount would have been fine for the opportunity to see/photo whales - but, since I was former military, they gave us $3 off each ticket! Very good of them.
The weather on this particular day was very misty, overcast and cool. Rosie and I weren't quite dressed warmly enough so, we purchased a couple of logo'd fleeces from the MBWWC and donned them before leaving the shed. This company appeared to have 2 80-100' sightseeing boats and they were using both of them. Our boat, the Sea Wolf II, had the added attraction of a young chocolate lab, 'Duke', as Captain's mascot! Boarded right at 0900 and pulled away from the pier soon thereafter.
On the way out of the harbor, we leisurely made our way around a variety of floating objects that provided resting places for a myriad of sea life including many harbor seals, saw some sea otters, nesting Cormorants, seagulls and, quite a few flying pterodactyls (pelicans). The weather continued to be gray with a good amount of wind... I'd guess between 10-15kts all day long. The seas were far from flat. On the way out to the viewing areas, 5-10 miles out into the bay, there was plenty of wave action. I'd guess at 4'-6' seas contributing some fairly big rollers... our saving grace was that the waves had long periods and made for a rolling action that was mostly tolerable. 'Course, we had quite a few passengers on board that were not enjoying the rolling and pitching of the boat. There were quite a few fishing boats out on the water. I was surprised at how daring some of the owners of some of the smaller fishing vessels were. The seas were high enough that those same ships would literally disappear in the troughs of the waves! Looked cool.
I was initially doubtful that we would see any whales but, it wasn't long before the deck house announced that they saw water spouts in the distance and we headed towards the tell tails! The crew throughout the day would work hard to keep one side of the boat or the other facing the direction of the whales. Our first whale encounters were with the big blues! Can't really describe exactly how cool, exciting and surreal the experience of whale watching was. Some of the excitement and ambiance was dampened by the weather and both Conor and I were concerned with Rosie because she spend most of the time sitting aft trying to maintain a modicum of dignity as she fought sea sickness... bless her heart! After the trip, she told us she believed things started going badly for her equilibrium when she was trying to video tape the whales while the boat was pitching, rolling and heaving all over the place early on.
It's a good thing we're in a digital world now-a-days because for every good shot of a whale's anything, I took 10-20 photos of disturbed water! One really needs x-ray vision to predict where the whale's will surface at any time. The blue whales had a pretty good 'tell' just prior to surfacing to eat, breathe and dive... more often than not, you'd see a bubbly disturbance in the water to an abnormal number of sea birds loitering in a particular area. Still, most of the blue whale photos we got were of their dorsal area and tails. A lucky few photos were of their huge mouths gaping open as they sucked in tons of krill laced gallons of water expelling that water through their baleen to capture and then swallow their favorite food. There were also a few opportunities to observe the blues laying out on their sides and flapping their flippers in the air... can't remember what cetacean biologists called that behavior? Magnificent beasts!
After a good amount of time admiring the blues, we headed off to find some humpbacks and find them we did! Turns out that humpbacks on this day were much more demonstrative than their blue cousins. As we were heading towards different pods of the humpbacks, we saw observed several occasions where a humpback would launch, 'breach', itself completely out of the water and crash back down into the water creating a huge splash very similar to any of us doing a belly flop in a pool. An amazing feat particularly for a mammal as large as a whale! I saw 2 of these events in the far distance only because I happened to be looking that way. Most of our fellow whale watchers were crowded up on the bow of the Sea Wolf II and depending on which side the Captain tried to keep the whales off to, most of the rest of our group would gather of the port or starboard side of the boat.
The once in a lifetime photo op moment for me came while I was leaning up against the rail on the port side of the bow with Conor bracing me with this own body to help stabilize me and keep me from getting pitched over the side or onto my rear. At the slow speeds we were moving the heave and pitch to the ship was significant. Anyway, we had moved closer to a couple of the humpbacks in the area and they had submerged. I was looking towards forward in the vicinity of the port quarter with my Canon T2i fitted with my zoom lens held about chest high. I noticed a disturbance on the water not to far away and as I moved the camera view finder to my eye, a 40 ton humpback started to breach! I depressed the shutter button and kept my finger down (I was in sport mode) and got the most amazing series of 5 photos I've ever been lucky enough to capture in pretty high quality resolution. It was incredible! My surprise over the event and suddenness of it nearly overwhelmed me with emotion. I was stunned, giddy and speechless and could not believe my good fortune! I was done with caring about shooting any more photos. :-) After that anything else we went to see was quite anti-climactic including a school of Risso's dolphins.
Risso dolphins look motley gray and scarred. Aside from their color, the size of their dorsal fins also distinguishes them from other dolphins, possessing the largest dorsal fins on any dolphin. Chased those around for a bit before heading back in to the harbor. Rosie was more than ready to get back in. Because she refused to move from her position back aft, she was quite chilled. On the way back in, we were surprised by a pelican who landed right amongst the folks sitting back aft right near Rosie! We all speculated that it was quite tired and undernourished. It rode with us back into the harbor where the crew released it back into the water. We also made a nice pass by Cannery Row and the Monterey Aquarium. Was nice being able to see everything from the sea.
We docked back at the Fisherman's Wharf right at 1300, tipped the crew and, disembarked with a thoroughly chilled Rosie. She told Conor and I that she was still quite pleased to have experienced this event and proud of the fact that she did not hurl! We rushed her to the nearest restaurant we could find, which happened to be right next to the MBWWC's shed, Isabella's Italian Seafood & Steak. They wanted to seat us upstairs but, we choose the table right next to the heated fire! Still took most of lunch to get her body temperature back up. Our meals of choice: Conor, chicken parm; Rosie, spaghetti & meatballs; Yours Truly, chicken piccata. We enjoyed a leisurely lunch reliving the whale watching together. Great morning!
Left the restaurant and slowly meandered our way down the wharf poking our heads in here, and there. Found a really cool candy shop and had to go inside. Left with 3 large bags of salt water taffy specifically loaded with flavors of our choice. Continued our walk off of the pier and back to our parking garage. Time was ~1415. Our day was far from over... we decided to head out for the 17 mile drive of Pebble Beach.
Drove to a point closest to our hotel to enter the 17mile drive. If you are a visitor to the Pebble Beach area, you've got to pony up $9.50 to purchase entry. The drive is spectacularly scenic and among other things takes you by several golf courses, including Pebble Beach, along the way. We paused numerous times along the way to take in the sights and enjoy some of the many interesting landmarks peppered along the coast line. Quite the windy day and yet there were plenty of hardy golfers out on the course stroking away. Our last stop was at the famous Pebble Beach Golf Club. We found parking and got out to explore.
If you love golf, Pebble Beach has plenty of vacation packages to accommodate hardcore golf fanatics. We were happy to just wander around the first tee and the putting green - which happened to be adjacent to the Lodge and Tap Room. Decided it would be cool to go into the Tap Room and enjoy some beverages of our choice and dessert. The golfing lifestyle and participants are a very different sort, as different as the boating lifestyle is to those of us that don't frequent those environments and venues. The one thing in common with both is: money... you need alot of it to carouse around at PGA level courses or yacht clubs of the rich & famous. I'm happy to be an occasional interloper to both worlds, most particularly to the boating world and sailing. Still, all-in-all a very pleasant hour spent enjoying delicious desserts and soaking up the ambiance of Pebble Beach! By the way, I enjoyed the Key Lime pie with a 'hot coffee toddy', Conor had an apple crumb something and, Rosie enjoyed a huge coconut cake. We paid our tab and strolled back to the SUV via the high brow shops that lined the putting green.
Left Pebble Beach and the 17mile drive via Hwy 1N back to Monterey. Got back to the hotel and our room by 1730. Still stuff to do so, freshened up some and headed back out to Cannery Row. My own selfish objective was to go mash as many souvenir pennies as I could along the Row... which ended up being about 14 of them at $.51 cents a pop! Love 'em.
Side Note: the morning we were leaving Monterey to Big Sur, Rosie and I decided to do some laundry. Took us a while to find the little laundromat but, we did. Only had 1 load to do and took us just over an hour to wash, dry and fold everything. That's not what this side note is about though... it's the change machines dotted around Cannery Row. We needed quarters to do the laundry so, we went up to one and I put in a $5 bill. I was expecting 20 quarters but instead, it spit out 5 $1 coins! I was quite pleased with that... something I absolutely didn't expect and, no surprise here, I like collecting the $1 coins! We ended up getting quarters at the laundromat. :-)
Anyway, we enjoyed a nice leisurely stroll almost back down to the Aquarium before turning around to head back. We weren't that hungry due to our late lunch and later dessert but, we went looking for a place to sit, relax and have some cocktails. Ended up walking up off the main strip, 1 block, and discovered the Cannery Row Brewing Company. Decided to try our luck... was a great choice! We asked for and got seated outside right next to a burning fire pit (not a real one but one that was gas fed)... key because it was still on the chilly side. Interestingly though, while we were enjoying our time in outside, the weather started to clear and you could clearly see the blue skies above. Our days in California ran long and really didn't go dark until 9 o'clockish.
Rosie and I really enjoyed our time this evening with Conor. We enjoyed some of the CR Brewing Co's micro brews and ordered finger food to snack on. As we started relaxing and opening up our conversations, Conor really had a lot of family questions of us. Both of us were quite surprised at the questions Conor asked of us and the inaccurate understandings he had of some of why our family is the way it is. We were happy to answer all his questions and tell him as many stories about growing up with Conor as we could remember. We spent over 2 very enjoyable hours just chatting and enjoying each others company before we settled up and walked back to our hotel. Got back to the room at ~2130.
What an incredible, amazing day! On to Big Sur tomorrow.
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