Today, I should blog on the the World Health Organization using Vedic Yoga to contact-trace Chinavirus. *Gunner looks out the window.* Screw that, it’s too nice outside. BEACH TRIP!
Lover’s Point in Monterey County is one of my favorite snorkeling spots. The area is better protected from Pacific Ocean currents than Santa Cruz and just far enough from the tourist traps that it’s usually not too crowded. It’s worth a drive to enjoy kelp forests that are literally waist-deep, which are the black stuff you see in the water.
The beach was open for ocean access but closed for actual fun. Between that and no SCUBA shops open, this was a purely snorkeling trip. Which made the “waist-deep” kelp forest the reason I chose here.
No restrooms? No problem. I’ll just do what fish do in the water: everything.
Hint, hint, government.
Also, the barricades were set up to create one-way lanes to and from the beach, which I thought was an effective intelligence test. Did you know that coronaviruses, like Australians, only drive on the left side? No? Then you’re normal.
The family that paddleboards together, stays together. Excepting the chick on the left who wore a thong bikini then dropped her soap. I did not intend that when I took this picture; I simply wanted to show the only normal family to take advantage of gorgeous California summer weather. But I don’t have a backup pic to offer.
In we go! This was midday at low tide, which I’d hoped would provide best visibility.
Orange kelp, green sea grass and purple sea urchins. The latter are a favorite food of sea otters and starfish.
Lots of purple sea urchins. There were a lot of starfish preying on them the last time I was here but not this time.
Hello, little fish! Lots of fry today but they don’t show up on camera and do keep to the kelp to avoid predators. The bigger ones kept following me, though.
One usually needs SCUBA gear to enjoy seacliffs like this one.
MUTANT! Actually, the red sea urchin was commercially viable to the point of being overfished like the Monterey sardines. I would have a lot more respect for environmentalists if only they would do their thing in the name of human welfare. It is not good to treat bugs like people and people like bugs… which is not to say that bugs can’t be important to human welfare and enjoyment.
Weirdly-shaped underwater rocks.
Ah, there’s a starfish!
This starfish has grabbed onto an urchin and is prying it open. I wonder if one could be trained to open jars?
The kelp forest wasn’t as big as last time, either. It took some swimming to reach the bigger plants.
Closer. Swimming through a kelp forest is like effortlessly flying through a tree-forest, but you need SCUBA to get the full effect. I was wearing so much neoprene to stay warm in this water that I couldn’t even freedive without a weight belt, which would have made swimming unpleasant.
All these pictures were taken just a foot or two below the surface. Ain’t many places you can do that with results this good.
It was hard to get a good picture of the kelp because at low tide, the upper portions lie flat along the surface and blot out the light. Kelp is naturally buoyant; otherwise, it would lie along the ground like a vine.
Inevitably, I got hungry. Inevitably, their concern for the welfare of tourists didn’t extend to reasonable prices. But what can I say, I supported the economy.
Screw our politicians for locking us indoors but worse than that is too many people not feeling the need to DO STUFF. There have never been more ways to enjoy nature in comfort yet most ‘Muricans are content to sit on their asses. Maybe the reason people don’t resist the lockdown is they don’t know what they’re missing outdoors?
My friend, feeriker, has just started his own blog. He is apparently too humble to be out pimping his site, so I’ll pimp for him here. Go over and “follow” feeriker’s site, so that you’ll be notified when he posts.
https://nuncamedesesperare.wordpress.com/
I’m expecting some good anti-Feminist stuff from our bold brother, feeriker!
Looks sweet. I’m in snorkelling/scuba heaven but all the beaches are closed. No doubt we’d corona from the fish.
I like the travelogue! Helps me to understand some of the natural appeal of CA that Californians rave about. I am glad you got out to enjoy it.
That’s sad and funny that you caught the picture of the thong. Why are women wearing those, especially the bigger ones, and when you have, and are with your family. Just based on that, and being in CA, you know how they vote.
“I’m in snorkelling/scuba heaven but all the beaches are closed. No doubt we’d corona from the fish.”
You know what they say: smiles are contagious!
Having spent my formative years (age 10 to 18) in the South San Francisco Bay Area (San Jose, to be exact), we made a lot of visits to Monterey, camping on the coast nearby when I was a kid. I also did two tours of duty as a student at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) during my military career, so actually got PAID to live there.
Even for someone like me who, despite having grown up there and still having family there, has come to despise California, there is something magical about the Monterey area that makes it not only impossible to hate, but an addiction that one cannot shake. My wife, on her first visit to California to visit my mother two years ago at Christmas time, fell so in love with Monterey, Pacific Grove, and Carmel that we wound up making three separate day trips to the area during our two-week visit. I warned her that she’d be hooked, but she didn’t believe me until it happened!
Anyway, your pictures bring back memories. I never thought I’d say that a California scene would make me nostalgic, but your pictures have done the trick! Nice, and thank you!
feeriker,
You didn’t happen to go to Valley Christian School did you?
I grew up in Cupertino, and went there to school.
You didn’t happen to go to Valley Christian School did you?
No, but one of my best friends did for Junior High and High School (this was back in the ’70s). I really wish I HAD gone to VCS, but Dad apparently couldn’t afford tuition for both me and my younger brother, so we were “sentenced” to publik skool. Thank God it was still somewhat functional and safe back then, because if I and my brother had been born two decades later than we were, there is no way our parents could have in good conscience allowed us to attend publik skool in San Jose.
Sadly, I’ve heard from several sources close to the family that VCS has really gone down hill in recent years. They’re apparently allowing lots of students to attend who are not from Christian homes (no doubt that’s a grab for tuition $$$$), which would be fine if these students were made to understand that they WILL adhere to the school’s Christian core values while students there. Apparently that’s not the case, however, and the school’s administrators and trustees are catering to the whims of the pagans. I wish I could say that this surprises me, but of course NOTHING surprises me in this day and age of the reign of churchianity, especially not in places like the PDSRC.
Cupertino, huh? Small world! I don’t know if you’ve been back to visit recently, but in order to live there now, bilingual fluency in Mandarin is pretty much essential. Just as English is a second language to Spanish in Miami, it’s becoming a second language to Chinese in much of the Bay Area.
I went to VCS during the 80’s. And what you say is true. Some kids who had been kicked out of the public school were allowed in. And it frustrated the teachers and many of the students.
Yes, I swung through Cupertino a few years ago, and it seemed like nobody had moved due to Proposition 13, they had just all gotten older. My neighbor still had his 69 El Camino SS parked outside. I got to point out the KFC where I had my first part time job, to my boys. And yes my parents had sold their house to a Chinaman. If I hadn’t gone to VCHS, I would have gone to “Tino” the high school most famous for their dropouts, Wozniack & Jobs.
Hey Gunner, I’m a diver too, I have done a shore dive at Monterey , actually it was 3 years ago on my way to a 4 day trip on the Ill fated Conception that burned last year. If you want to communicate off blog let me know, I live in S. Oregon and the shore dives are very similar here, lots of fish if you are a hunter too! Blessings.
Vortex, did you get the e-mail I sent last week?