Up bright and early courtesy of being booted out at 9am. This bit of the ride is through miles and miles of fruit farms, mostly strawberries at first, then artichokes. It’s still foggy and cool. These are strawberries.
We pass through the town of Moss Landing, chiefly distinguished by it’s power station, obvious for miles.
It’s right on the water, and has a resident population of sea lions.
They also deep-fry artichokes here. Why, I’m not sure.
The diner next to it was good, though, we had breakfast there.
The rest of the route was cloudy and cold, so we stopped for the night in a motel in Marina, about 12 miles short of Monterey. We had a Mexican meal, and listened to a chappy play the Jalisco Harp.
So, the morning after the Jalisco Harp we set off for Monterey. We had planned to stay here for a couple of days, as we want to see the Aquarium, and we also have to slow down our journey a bit or we’ll be at the border too early for our flight home. LA is still a ways off, though.
We pitch up in Monterey, and then spend about two hours trying to find a cheapish motel. The following morning, we catch a bus into town and walk round the waterfront. They have sea otters here, as well as sea lions and pelicans, so Diane is in seventh heaven. Here’s a couple of sea otters.
And some seals. Harbour seals, actually, doing their sausage impersonation.
We popped down to Cannery Row, formerly an important canning centre for sardines, anchovies and the like, now an important centre for t-shirts, ice cream and Cannery Row related tat. They also have Muriels, here showing a whale, and also John Steinbeck, who wrote a book called Cannery Row, which apparently gave the place it’s name.
For lunch, we go to the Cannery Row Brewing Company, where they have 73 beers on tap. And very good they are too. I had a number of very small pints, as you can see. (Now concentrate this time, Dougal. These [he points to some plastic cows on the table] are very small; those [pointing at some cows out of the window] are far away. No, I still don’t get it Ted, will I put the kettle on ?)
After this, we ambled back to the centre and ate ice cream with Diane’s new friend.
I was keen to see the Aquarium, so we booked on the interyweb that evening (on the advice of the museum staff) and set off early, hoping to catch the feeding of the penguins (another favourite Diane bird) at 10:30. I had always meant to visit when I was an HP employee, as the place had been endowed by David Packard, and HP employees got a discount, but I never had. It’s actually very good, and we spent most of the day there. It was packed. Here’s the penguins: they are the survivors of a mass stranding because a rise in sea temperature caused their food fish to swim north. The penguins followed, and hundreds ended up stranded on beaches because they were too tired to swim any further. Global warming, eh ? Got to love it. I wonder if the guys in the RVs towing full-size Dodge trucks with motorbikes on the back ever visit the Aquarium. Probably can’t find anywhere to park.
Here’s some puffins also.
They have an outstanding display of jelly fishes of various sorts.
And also of sea horses. Sorry for the blurry photos, but they were in circular tanks.
All in all, a jolly good day. Off to Big Sur tomorrow.
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