Attention: These posts following our coastal Christmas-thru-New-Year’s trip are named a bit specifically, that’s because when these were originally shared, they only had one photo each due to bandwidth limitations back in the day. Since that time, I’ve updated them to include images that relate to the details of each day.

We stayed at the Glen Oaks Motel in Big Sur last night; they had a tiny little closet of a room we could rent for under $500 a night. Actually, I think we got it for about $100 which in Big Sur is unheard of. The woman who checked us in gave us this tip that in the morning we might want to consider a hike out to the Andrew Molera State Park. This is our trail in.

It seems like the lighting conditions were changing by the minute. Maybe I should have stuck around until the pelicans were better lit, but the commotion we could hear in the distance demanded that we keep on moving.

It’s beautiful out on this trail; I have to wonder why we’d never been here before.

Caroline took up a seat for the show that was going on below.

Birds were amassing and just as quickly peeling off.

At times it looked like a tornado of birds swirling up into the sky after they took off from the water below.

On our way into the park, we saw that we were passing thousands of Monarch Butterflies, but they were still warming up, so we figured we catch them on the way back out.

Garrapata State Park in Carmel-By-The-Sea is the kind of place in which we get easily lost as our senses are tickled from all sides.

If I told you that this might be our single favorite place along the entire California coast, it wouldn’t be too far from the truth.

Old hippie cafe Tillie Gorts in Pacific Grove, California, is still serving up some great eating. [edit: closed in 2018]

Having bought a new membership earlier this year for your whale-watching adventure, we just had to make a return visit to make sure we wrung as much value as we could from the cost. One of the membership perks for the Monterey Bay Aquarium is free entry. All we needed to do was pick up a pass, and in we went. Dale Chihuly has a number of pieces on display at the aquarium.

This afternoon, having the “better camera” doesn’t really work in my favor. Sure, this is a decent photo of a jellyfish, considering the poor lighting and all, but Caroline, with the older point-and-shoot, got some great results, even if they were inadvertent.

Sorry to my wife for having the copyright as John Wise on this, as it was taken by Caroline Wise; it’s just a matter of my being lazy in photo prep. I love the result she got.

I don’t typically like blurry shots, but there’s an aesthetic quality to these that struck my senses, and just had to include them with this post.

Yep, this one is from Caroline, too.

As is this. I like the nearly monochrome look.

I took the photo of the sunfish catching someone else’s flash at the exact right moment. The tank we’re in front of implores visitors not to use flash but that doesn’t always work out.

Fish of any sort wouldn’t have been on the menu here at Dharma’s Restaurant in Santa Cruz, as they only serve up vegetarian fare. If you wonder if I like vegetarian food, does that look like the face of someone who doesn’t?