Today is the last day of my 57th year; tomorrow, I’ll be 58. But this wasn’t just any old day closing out another year of life. I was working to clean up the grammar of older blog posts when I came across one about the Monterey Bay Aquarium we last visited in 2017. That triggered me to wonder when the aquarium might reopen; well, today was my lucky day as they are making that splash on May 1st to members only and then on the 15th to the general public. If you think that just because we are 700 miles (1,137km) from Monterey, we aren’t members, you are wrong.

Here, just before my birthday, I worked out a nearly 10-day trip and already booked our lodging reservations in the sincere belief that when the aquarium opens reservations on April 26th at 9:00 a.m. PST, I’ll be right there to book our entry for a 10:00 a.m. entry for one of the days we’ll be up there.

If that wasn’t exciting enough, I also have us booked at the Lover’s Point Inn in Pacific Grove, just down the street from the aquarium, along with two more unbelievable nights in the Human Nest at Treebones Resort in Big Sur. From there, we’ll head down to Cambria to stay at a place across the street from the ocean. While I still have some details to figure out, the frenzy of having worked all that out requires me to take a break and allow my brain to stop sizzling. This kind of excitement is taxing on old men’s brains, NOT! The photo above is the note I wrote and the drawings Caroline made back at the end of 2010 when, for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, we stayed in the nest but were nearly blown out of our perch; click here to see that post!

While it feels like we’ve been to the aquarium dozens, if not hundreds of times, the truth is more modest. This is our 11th visit in 29 years or hardly enough when I see it this way. Our first time ever in Monterey back in January 1992 included the aquarium and then in 1997, after we’d moved to America, we took my mother-in-law Jutta with us to visit this magic place. In 2001 and 2002, we visited once each year, but in 2004 and 2005, we visited twice each of those years. This was followed by a six-year pause, and we didn’t return until 2011. Another six-year break ensued that culminated with our last visit in 2017. Now, in 2021, seeing this on our horizon, it almost feels like there should have been five or six other visits thrown in there over the years, but obviously, there were other places on the map we wanted to visit, too.

Maybe we’ll make it an even dozen times we’ll have visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium come 2022 when a new “Into The Deep” exhibit is scheduled to open.