Sailin' on Monterey Bay

Yesterday Guido, Brooke, and I went sailing on Monterey Bay...Guido's a veteran expert sailor with his own boat...a comfy 27 footer. It was a crisp, brilliant winter day with a warm sun. Not quite as much wind as we would have liked, but we sailed for a couple of hours. Very tranquil. We saw a sloat surfing the swells; pelicans divebombing for fish; and we did a little fishing of our own. Didn't see any whales; they should show up in a few weeks. January to March is the main whale season. There were a number of whale watching boats sharing the water with us; guess they got skunked too!

Pelican taking a break in between dive bomb attacks on the local fishies. Pelicans are the jet fighters of the bird world!

Guido holding up a couple of fish...we caught about half a dozen overall. Sometimes they nibbled the bait and got away with it, but on one cast I got three fish on a total of five hooks!

A pelican prepares to dive bomb a fish.

Boids Holdin' the Beach

Beautiful crisp winter day today,

following a good soaking rain last night. The gulls are just hangin' out on the beach. Perhaps they're pondering the playoff chances of the Ravens (they're in); Seahawks (probably); Eagles (maybe); Falcons (they need help); and Cardinals (fuggetaboutit). At any rate the boids are unfazed by the big surf in the background.

Big Kahuna Waves

Here's a wave breaking at Carmel River State Beach. For scale, if you blow up the pic you can see a seagull cruising above it. From top to bottom these breakers are a good 10-15 feet; There were bigger ones than that today, and I've seen MUCH bigger surf on several occasions in the past.

High Surf Advisory

Massive surf at Carmel River State Beach today! My old colleagues had issued a high surf advisory, and it was certainly verifying here. This is a common winter occurrence. I believe there is a steep dropoff just offshore from the beach here, so the swells come in and build up rapidly just before hitting the shore. The result is these towering, spectacular breakers. They tend to break simultaneously along a broad front, so you NEVER see surfies here. These two pix are of the same wave, I believe; anyone trying to surf it would obviously get racked up to da max.

Crisp winter afternoon

What does an old sloat do on a clear, crisp winter day when he's retired and can do pretty much what he wants? He goes down the coast to Garrapata SP and hikes a little, and finds a fine spot at which to sloat out, enjoy the view, chill, and read for a while. Exercise, serenity, and scenery are all achieved simultaneously. Having been home for two weeks, I'm eager to hit the road again, but sometimes I have to remind myself that people come from all over the world to hang out in my home area. It ain't bad! From the vantage point of the photos you can see whales migrating in season. Didn't see any yesterday but they should show up soon as they start swimming by en masse in January.

These two pictures show the Big Sur coast about 15 miles south of Monterey. I have hiked up about a 200 foot hill and am sloating out on the summit. One interesting note...in one of the pix you see two isolated rocks well offshore. Once I came here during a massive high surf event and the seaward of the two rocks was being completely overrun by waves! This was quite impressive since the rocks are 25-35 feet above the water.

Elephant Sloat!

Couldn't wind up the trip without visiting my counterparts, the Elephant sloats at Pt Piedras Blancas. This is a big ol' bull sloat, coming ashore to lay claim to his harem of sheila sloats. The bulls establish position during December. In January the females give birth to pups conceived the previous winter, and in February the bulls who have won harems mate with the females: then everyone goes back out to sea, starting the cycle for the following winter. The action is just starting; it's very interesting to watch the sloats from now thru February. Go down and check 'em out!

I have finally returned from my trip...got back the afternoon of the 5th. A few stats...

Days on the road...82

Miles traveled...13,814

States visited....29

States visited overnight...21

States hiked in...17

National parks, monuments, battlefields, historical sites seen...at least 12

Days with snow...2

Days with thunderstorms...zero!

Tickets received...zero. Made some mistakes here and there but never got caught.

Cell phones wrecked by dropping in swamp...1

Digital cameras wrecked by dropping on pavement...1

Total fine for being a klutz...about $500...had to replace 'em!

It was a wonderful trip, the culmination of a dream I'd had for thirty years. And it seemed natural...I love being on the road! A stop of three days or so was always enough rest; then I was ready to roll again. I'll be home for awhile now, but next year I'll be back out on the highway. I am planning to drive up to Canada in June and explore...might wind up in Alaska.

Last sunset of the trip

This was the last sunset of my trip, from my balcony at Pismo Beach. I've enjoyed many sunsets from here...I come down here a couple times each winter. It's a great beach town.

Hangin' with the gull

Watching the sunset at Pismo from my deck, I had some company. The gulls like it here too! There must be a lot of fish about as there are hundreds of pelicans, gulls, and cormorants here at the moment.

Hangin' at Pismo

On the way home I stopped at Pismo Beach, one of my favorite hangouts for many years. The Best Western Shore Cliff Motel sits on a cliff above the ocean with awesome views from virtually every room. The cliffside is home to hundreds of pelicans during the fall and winter. They were hangin' out in force when I was there. This bloke is chillin' on the rocks about 50 feet above the ocean, preparatory to goin' fishing. I love watching the pelicans cruise and maneuver, then dive bomb the fish. They're the jet fighters of the bird world! This area also has lots of gulls and cormorants.

Lizard in his natural habitat

The lizard loves it here in the desert. He is impervious to the spines of the hedgehog cactus, and scoffs at the aridity. If it was hot, he wouldn't mind that either though he would tend to stay in the shade. This is his natural habitat. Actually the lizard didn't want to leave, but I promised him I'd bring him back here when I return next year.

An Athletic Apparition

This looks like a picture of typical Arizona desert, and in the foreground it is. But if you blow up the picture you'll see a large white structure far in the distance. This is the Arizona Cardinals' new football stadium. The NCAA championship game will be played there next month. Suburban Phoenix is encroaching on the desert with breathtaking speed. I took the picture from White Tank Mountain Regional Park, which is protected from development, but outside the park, it's fair game for the bulldozers. Where the people are going to get water from in the future is a mystery to me.

It would certainly be worth seeing the Ohio State-Florida game, but as for the Cardinals, they usually lose. So if you're over on the west side of the Phoenix area, you can choose between spending 50-100 dollars to watch the football team stink up the place, or you can fork over 5 bucks and enjoy the beauty and peace of the desert inside the park. I reckon the choice is easy for the old sloat!

Cactus garden

You can see five types of cactus in this picture. The squat group in the lower left are hedgehogs. These don't look like much in early December after months without rain, but in spring after a wet winter, this cactus produces a large, gaudy magenta flower that is spectacular. It's almost as large as the cactus itself. The tall ones are saguaros. The fatter one in the lower right is a barrel cactus. You can see some teddy bear chollas in the background, looking somewhat fluorescent. The skinnier, less fuzzy looking cacti near the center of the picture are buckhorn cholla, which produce fine flowers in the spring that may be red, yellow, or magenta. At some point, after a wet winter, I will go back to the Arizona desert when it's blooming and then you'll see some gorgeous pix!

Teddy Bear Cholla

This bundle of spines is known as a teddy bear cholla cactus. If you see it silhouetted against the sun, it looks warm and fuzzy, but in reality this is one sharp mutha of a plant. The spines adhere to any surface that so much as brushes up against them, and they are very, very difficult to dislodge. It's so easy to get stuck by these things that the cacti are also known as jumping cholla.

This is not true...not quite. The cactus will not jump up and stick you but if you don't steer well clear of it, you will get stuck somehow. Take it from one who knows. The cactus propagate when a clump falls off the main plant and takes root next door; thus the teddy bears tend to grow in groves, impassable to humans and most...but not all...critters.

Life cycle of the saguaro

Since my first visit to Arizona in 1973, I, along with many other folks, have enjoyed and been fascinated with the Saguaro cactus. This symbol of the desert southwest is a remarkable plant. It lives 200 plus years, grows to a height of 40-50 feet. It produces showy flowers on the ends of its arms in late spring, followed by fruits in summer that have long been harvested by the local

Indians. Some of the cacti are stately and symmetrical; others are gnarly and send out arms in all directions. Each saguaro seems to have its own personality. The saguaro may grow for as much as 75 years before beginning to sprout arms, so when you see a saguaro that looks like a candelabra, you're seeing a veteran cactus.

I'm trying to load pix in a chronological order. At the bottom you should see a dead saguaro; when the fiber of the cactus drops off, its wooden skeleton is revealed. Saguaro skeletons have long been used as building material by the Hohokam Indians and other indigenous people.

A mature saguaro is majestic, towering into the clear southwestern sky. The range of saguaros is limited. The cactus needs summer rainfall, so it doesn't grow in California because monsoon moisture rarely extends that far west. You see lots of saguaros in peoples' yards in Palm Springs, but they're transplants from Arizona. Saguaros can take light frosts but not prolonged freezing temperatures, so they're only found in the Sonoran desert below about 3500 feet elevation. They thrive best between about 1000 and 3000 feet in Arizona.

Young saguaros often start growing under a mesquite, ironwood, or paloverde tree. The bush gives the cacti shelter from the elements and predators that would otherwise eat seeds. It's common to see mature saguaros growing up from one of these three desert plants. The small young saguaro pictured is maybe 10-20 years old; they grow slowly.

Oak Creek Canyon Hideaway

I stayed at a beautiful condo in Oak Creek Canyon...the complex is named Junipine. The units are on a hill right above the creek, in a juniper and pine forest, naturally. They all have full kitchens, huge decks, fireplaces supplied daily with wood, and are cozy to da max. Not cheap, but good value for the money. It's a short distance to hiking trails, the town of Sedona with its many restaurants and galleries, and you can day trip to the Grand Canyon. Or, you can just sloat out on the deck and soak up the view pictured...and at night you can sloat out in the living room by the fire. A wonderful place...I'll be back! My unit didn't have a hot tub, but many do.

Meteor Crater

The blog site has apparently corrected the earlier problem and I can once again post pix to the blog. I'm a ways behind. This is a shot of Meteor Crater between Flagstaff and Winslow, Az. It's quite impressive...about a mile across and 550 feet deep. It looks like a volcanic crater with the walls rising above the surrounding plain similar to Crater Lake...and originally it was attributed to volcanic action. But no...it was caused by a meteor slamming into the ground about 50 thousand years ago. Quite a shock, I reckon. I forget how large the original meteor was estimated to be, but it was perhaps the size of a house...Wikipedia doesn't say.

Pictures?

After several days off the internet...I was staying at a friend's house near Phoenix...I am back online, but the blogger is not giving me an opportunity to insert pictures along with the narrative! I was hoping to post several pictures from the Arizona desert, which has always fascinated me...there's such a diversity of plant and animal life in an inhospitable environment. Hopefully I can get this problem resolved when I get home...only two days hence. After an absence of two and a half months, I'm back in California!