Just Two Nerds

For our final portion of our California Trip (after a long break from the last recap… ), Louisa and I took a drive up the Big Sur Coastline to the Monterey Peninsula.  After leaving San Simeon, we stopped by a beach full of elephant seals (that really liked flipping sand on each other while resting).

On the rest of the drive on the Big Sur coastal highway (Highway 1), we passed over many historic bridges (like the one shown above) and mountain cliffs.  One thing that you won’t see on this drive are a lot of calm, sandy beaches until you get to Carmel.  This was definitely one of the more scenic drives that we took on this trip.

After some rest, Louisa and I went on a whale watch where we saw many orca and humpback whales.  It was a pretty rare occasion on the whale watch, because the group of orcas (Killer Whales) was going after a baby humpback whale.  It looked like the baby humpback whale survived the battle.

We spent our final day in Monterey checking out the shoreline around Fisherman’s Wharf.  The amount of marine wildlife in the area is astounding (especially if you are not used to the ocean).  During our walk we saw (many) sea lions, seagulls, pelicans, and a pair of dolphins that loved to jump out of the water near shore.  Because of our wildlife viewing (and horrible traffic), we almost missed our flight back to Denver later that evening.  Looking back, maybe that wouldn’t have been a bad thing.

Tags: beaches, dolphins, ocean, sea lions, whales