Vicious Sea Lions

Sea Lions on the Docks

Sea Lions Regulating Their Temperature

Sea Lions on a Buoy

In the wake of yesterday’s whale watching expedition, today’s photo gallery is all about the California sea lion. Is a group of sea lions a pride? I can image being hunted through tall submarine grasses, read kelp, except that I don’t think that it works like that at least for humans. Yesterday’s sea lions of Moss Landing and today’s at Monterey’s fisherman’s wharf are all pretty much just beggar pests. They are protected, so you can’t mistreat them and they take advantage of this. I suppose that if one provokes them they could be vicious, but it is just easier to lure them out of your way with some fish, rather than confront them, because you know, once riled, they can be vicious.

Dan left today. We drove him to Salinas, where he took the train back to LA. Before his boarding, we took coffee at the Sang Café, whose claim to fame is that the author John Steinbeck ate there. This seems totally believable, since the Steinbeck museum is right across the street. We waved Dan off from the train platform as his multi-multi-car train sped away. Rail traffic is alive and well in the Golden State. He is headed back to LA to pack up all his cares and woes, because he is moving to Brooklyn. The second most costly city in America just wasn’t expensive enough. The tentative plan is that he’ll drive his rent-a-truck to Saint Louis, where I meet up with him and then we’ll hit the Big Apple together. The most recent New Yorker magazine features a cartoon that shows a highway road sign labeled – ENTERING “So what are your kids doing?” (Formerly Brooklyn). I’m looking forward to this potential father-son road trip. It should be fun. New York, New York…

Anne and I spent the rest of the day walking along the coast in Monterey and neighboring Pacific Grove. We started at fisherman’s wharf, where a Spanish galleon (actually a carrack) replica had just docked for a showing this weekend. Fighter jets were flying overhead, landing at the Monterey airport for an air show this weekend in Salinas. We walked west to Lover’s Point, but did not to leap. We saw otters and otter marine biologists too. Later, we scurried back to the car, by way of a yarn store. We got home just in time to head out again for dinner at Fifi’s. Thank you, Dad.

Sooty Sunset

The clouds pictured in the above sunset picture is really soot from the fire that has been burning in the Los Padres National Forest, just south of Monterey, all summer long. Earlier this summer, my brother Chris captured a picture of this fire, when it crested the hill across Carmel Valley. He took that photo not far from home. This was the sunset that greeted us last night, when we arrived at my Dad’s house. Today, Dan, Anne and I first headed to Point Lobos State Park, which is just south of Carmel-by-the Sea. It was even more crowded than before, but we got in OK. We first did some rock crawling and tide-pooling. Eventually, the fog moved in and all the ocean vistas disappeared behind it. A north wind had blown the smoke away, but had also brought the fog. Instead, we walked one of the more forested trails and saw different, but still interesting things. The park is suffering from both the drought, but also from too many visitors. Later, we lunched at the Village Corner, in Carmel. My Dad later informed me that when we were little, Chris and I got ice cream cones there, almost sixty years ago. Dinner tonight, with the whole family, was also in Carmel, at the Rio Grill. It was pretty fancy. It’s not that we’ve been spending all of our time eating out, it just sounds that way.