There was no sleeping in today; we were out at the first moment the sun peeked over the distant horizon. Golden light spilled into the sky, accompanied by a blinding streak of white slicing over Monterey Bay. Over in Germany, some of our family are spending this Sunday together for their annual September reunion. Over WhatsApp, they share smiling faces; we share a view of the rising sun over the Pacific.

Strangely, there are only about a dozen of us out here for the start of the day, well, us people, the pelicans, some seagulls, a few others, and a splashing seal putting on an acrobatics show. The sound of the surf and birds don’t appear to offer the local group of women exercising under the trees enough of a background, so they’ve brought a soundtrack the rest of us can listen to as we pass by. The same goes for some of the walkers and runners who somehow don’t think that they might be disturbing others who prefer to listen in on the natural environment.

We move away to find another beautiful spot under the riot of nature, unpolluted by the ugliness of our fellow humans. Once we’ve basked in the cleansing light of the sun but not yet burned to a crisp, we’ll need coffee to wash off the grime of disdain for the rude people around us. That’s right, we bathe in boiling coffee before trying to drown in it. And where does this ablution occur this morning? At the Red House Café on 19th and Lighthouse. Any ill will towards others that I might have gathered was temporarily kicked to the side as a father passed by with a baby and a toddler in a stroller and their dog in tow. The toddler excitedly announced to us and everybody in earshot that he’d just seen a fungus. That four-year-old boy was serious about how amazing the sight of a real live fungus was, and if that enthusiasm isn’t able to put a smile on someone’s face, nothing will. Not to imply that I’m not generally happy, but I cannot turn off my annoying trait of always paying attention to others, something at which Caroline is coolly adept.

The day had started to resemble yesterday as we were the first in line again and we found ourselves at the same table on the patio, only I order something different while Caroline opted for the yummy frittata again. Last year, when we first ate here, Caroline pointed out how unbelievable it was that we were now sitting here on the cafe’s sunlit porch while on our earlier visits to Pacific Grove, we wouldn’t have wanted to afford the place nor join the line. By the way, this patio and house is not where we ate breakfast; it was just a nice little bungalow on our way there.

Back to the similarities between days: we’ll walk away from the Red House Cafe after our breakfast for a return visit to the aquarium. I’m fairly sure, though, that it will be like visiting for the first time as all the swimming creatures in the cold seawater tanks will have reorganized themselves just for our time among them. Of course, I’ll be taking plenty of photos to prove this. Not that this matters, but I’d like to point out that I’m not, in fact, ignoring Caroline right now as I write these musings as she’s practicing her texting-fu chatting with her German bestie, Claudia. Not only are they communicating across the oceans as Claudia is somewhere in Europe, but my wife is smiling like a loon from time to time. The reason I can’t be sure about Claudia’s whereabouts is that she and her significant other seem to vacation as much as we do if not more. [Nobody we know vacations as much as we do, I reckon. – Caroline]

The parallel universe of coincidence again sees us walking the water’s edge to the aquarium. Is it the exact same time we are arriving for the 9:30 members-only opening, or is it slightly earlier or later?

Once inside, a glitch derails our move to the always-beckoning Kelp Forest, and instead, we are drawn to the Open Sea to experience the jellyfish all for ourselves. Not content to just have my photographs and potentially nonsensical blog posts, Caroline saw the opportunity to bring videos of the jellies home with her.

Was our time among the jellies two minutes, or was it a half-hour? It’s hard to tell now that we’ve learned that these gelatinous Medusozoas warp time with their tentacled ancient arm things. After more than 500 million years they’ve evolved to a level of sophistication that allows them to live in a timeless infinity, pulsing through an ocean traveling forever; that, or they lay in wait to sting a hapless human to death.

After our psychedelic jelly encounter, Caroline needed to maintain the visual intensity, and what other than laying down under a school of sardines could come close?

Try as I might, I cannot understand just why the hammerhead shark evolved with its eyes so far away from its body. What kind of wicked sensing system is in that crossbar that holds eyes that cannot possibly see what it’s about to eat? I should probably do a little bit of searching before making such assumptions, as it turns out that hammerheads have 360-degree vision thanks to their peculiarly shaped heads. Combine that kind of vision with the old ampullae of Lorenzini, and I’m growing increasingly certain that the ocean is stuffed chock full of aliens.

I’m noticing a trend with animals that sport some level of transparency, such as man-killing jellies. These predatory tunicates are able to swallow whole scuba divers who approach too closely. I know they don’t look that big, but that’s because we are looking at them through rearview mirrors, so we can see their immense size in such tight confines found here in the aquarium.

You could wager that I’m now fearful of searching for information about the brittle stars, and I don’t mean the ones from Hollywood. First of all, I came to see that this is not what I thought it was; it is a sea star of the Brisingida family, meaning it’s a predator (hopefully not like the one from the movie). Not your ordinary sea star, of course not; this one doesn’t just filter its meals from the current of water around it. According to an NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) article, “Their spines are covered in tiny claws which act as sort of a “starfish Velcro.” Using these claws, they snag all passing life (regardless of size, I’m speculating) and then pass their meal down to their mouths using tube feet.

Here you go; it turns out that Brisingida sea stars are related to brittle stars, and before I got to the NOAA article, I opened a page from Scientific American about how brittle stars see. This won’t be good, and spoiler alert, the details are about to be shared. I’ll paraphrase here, “Their arms are loosely coordinated by a nerve ring in the animal’s core, almost like eight co-joined monster animals with a mutual interest in where to go, what to eat, and making little monster stars.” And people have the audacity to complain about paying taxes when we are able to go to a restaurant, sleep in a cozy bed, and live on land in houses instead of in this underwater world of nightmares?

Time-warping hallucination-inducing jellies, people swallowing tunicates, and now these f&%#ing hagfish. Blind and toothless, they eat the dead, from the inside no less! Not enough horror for you? They are known to suffocate other fish that try eating them by the copious amounts of slimy mucus they are able to produce; we’re talking serious bucketload amounts of the stuff that clogs the gills of the fish, and if that’s not doing the trick, they can tie themselves into an overhand knot while in the fish creating more difficulties for the idiot fish that won’t be trying to snack on this creeper again, should it survive.

Right after we return to Phoenix, I want to find out if there’s a doctor performing hagfish stem cell therapy so I can be the first man on earth with a self-lubricating slime penis.

After our encounter with the self-lubricating seaworms snarfing on death, we were psychically contacted by the flamboyant cuttlefish to pay a return visit to the salmon snailfish. How did we miss this yesterday? Their bodies are semi-transparent, which does not portend good things, and what about those mesmerizing hypnotic eyes? Oops, too late! Caroline was the first to be put in a trance by the blue-silver eye that allowed the fish to communicate to her that, as a species, they do not like their scientific name of Careproctus, which was derived from Ancient Greek where κάρα or kara translates to face and πρωκτός or prōktos is translated as anus meaning they are Butthole Faces. I want to adopt one.

Are things weird enough for you yet? Do you see those chin fins? The salmon “asshole-head” snailfish uses them to look for food in the sand as it plants itself face first on the sea floor, see photo from yesterday. By the way, you might notice its eyes are now black; that’s because this “Po-Kopf” (German technical term) has met its match with a bigger asshole-head who is stealing its powers in order to crown me King Facia-prōktos.

See that crab? Salmon snailfish are known to use them as repositories for their eggs; yep, you read that right: the fish with butt face uses king crabs parasitically by installing its eggs in the crab gills, turning them into a mobile home/incubator for their offspring. Jesus, Caroline, what are we doing here in this house of horrors?

This is the point in the aquarium where all truths gleaned from any loose-lipped Perciformes will be erased using the kinetic color pulsing living embodiment of the “Neuralyzer” as seen in Men in Black (oh my god, John, just how hypocritical are you?). Obviously, it didn’t fully work on me, and I can only surmise that my good fortune in retaining the truth about the secret marine culture that uses us for its entertainment has been left partly intact due to our particular sequence of events whereby some strange chance I took notes prior to my mind-washing and didn’t trash the crazy stuff I wrote. Trust me, I thought twice about sharing what’s in my notebooks but this is what I found there.

No, seriously, where did the first two hours of the day go? We cannot leave the aquarium without a pilgrimage to the Kelp Forest, but getting there could be problematic as we suffer from “Needtoseeitallagainitis.”

Any number of things could distract us on our journey that must conclude with finding the exit. Oh, what’s this? It’s the old boilers used here when prior to the aquarium taking over, this was a sardine cannery. Funny how, in all the years of visiting Monterey, I think this is the first time I’ve ever photographed the old sardine processing equipment near the entry.

Well, sure, that is a kelp forest out there, but we’re looking for the one with that old familiar musical accompaniment that makes us all sentimental when we listen to it at home in the weeks and months between visits (MBA Kelp Forest Live Cam).

Ah yes, the soundtrack of Jaws starts its haunting throb as the shark approaches.

And with that, we have to bid adieu to another visit to one of our favorite places ever here at the great Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Obviously, we broke free of the aquarium, which is more than any of the fish can say (not that fish say a lot, as far as we know). Though a magic sardine whispered at us that Queen Elizabeth would die in four days, but come on, how could a sardine know that?

You can trust this isn’t just some more lollygagging for the sake of wasting time; we left our car at the motel as parking anywhere near the aquarium is difficult at best and an underwater horror story at worst. Regarding this never-before-seen view of the bay, by us anyway, there’s a small passage between the Hopkins Marine Station operated by Stanford University on the left and the aquarium on the right. The white sand beach is Cabrillo Beach and appears totally inaccessible to those of us on the wrong side of the fence, which is apparently anyone not working at the research facility.

We know we are inching towards the next exit, that of leaving Pacific Grove and the Monterey Bay area. Heavy hearts weigh on empty stomachs having us consider our lunch plans. Oh no, the Mexican joint we ate at yesterday doesn’t open for lunch on Sundays! Lucky us, I called ahead to the Borg that we’d be a bit late picking up our car as we were looking to have something to eat first, and our choice of grabbing a bite at Peppers was nixed; well, the mysterious voice on the other end commanded us to go to the Monarch Pub and Restaurant for some English grub. All of a sudden, the words of the sardine were haunting me like this was some kind of foreshadowing or were the butterflies trying to message us?

Klingeling! That’s the sound a German bike bell makes and has brought me around from my fits of hallucinatory madness, which propelled this writing. Now, back in reality, I’m here thinking of that wonderful post I wrote in Germany just last year that featured 23 images of bicycle bells and some thoughts about the process of aging. You should read it if for no other reason than to cleanse the mental palate of the things drawn out of my imagination, you might have endured in the paragraphs above.

It was 3:00 when we hit Highway 1, traveling south. We were well aware that we couldn’t afford the indulgence going down the coast that we took on our way up. With only 4 and 1/2 hours of daylight remaining to our still glorious day, we’ll be measured, discriminating, and intentional about where we choose to spend our precious time under the sun.

Knowing this limitation, we hadn’t planned on the heavy traffic with two complete stops at construction sites and a serious backup at the Bixby Bridge.

We were about to sail right past Big Sur, or so was my intention, before Caroline wailed about how beautiful the view of Point Sur was, so I quickly pulled over.

Did we even make it a few miles before the view had us pulling over again? Nope, this is looking behind us from the same pullout where I photographed Point Sur, but it is beautiful that way, too; I just had to include it. Now, we’ll hit the gas and get moving, as we have a long drive ahead of us before we pull into Cambria for the night.

Oh, this is nice, but so were the other stops along the way that I’m not including in this post because I’ve already included 42 photos, and that’s simply enough, along with being the answer to the Great Question.

How had it taken us 90 minutes to get this far? The Henry Miller Library is in Big Sur. We’re hardly crawling along at a snailfish pace, but the library is open which for us is surprising as we are typically on the wrong side of the clock for a visit. This can only mean we MUST stop.

For those who don’t know, Henry Miller is considered a literary innovator and has been said to be a major influence on the original generation of Beat writers. His works were banned in the United States for many years, likely due to the sexual content. When I was in my early 20s, I tried reading Tropic of Cancer and Sexus, and neither title gelled with me; they are now long gone. As I cannot deny his influence nor the respect I have for an author who inspires so many other writers, it was fitting that we’d take this opportunity to stop in and even support the place.

While I feel my interest in the Beats has passed, and I read On The Road by Jack Kerouac many years ago, I’d never read his book titled Dharma Bums, and so that was my title of choice today. We didn’t have a lot of time to make choices as we’d arrived shortly before they were closing. Caroline chose Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan about, you guessed it, Ferdinand Magellan. This is a beautiful little bookshop full of interesting titles for those interested in alternatives outside the mainstream books that are not typically carried by the dominant big box store.

Leaving the library and enjoying the art and grounds here next to Highway 1, a fully naked, bubbly young lady flutters by as if this might be how she goes about life every day. I keep my camera aimed at this old typewriter as I must control my creepy old man persona trying to escape.

Not 10 miles down the road, the massive view beckons, and we easily oblige, but it’s okay as we are getting close to the halfway point to Cambria at a mere 55ish miles down that way or so. Caroline had already gotten back in the car, and I was about to do the same when something caught my eye.

A spout of water is what flashed into my peripheral vision, and not two seconds later, a whale breached. Yelling at Caroline to jump back out, she was soon next to me. Not only did the two of us see the breach, but the crack that followed was amazing, too. The lens I was using is obviously not ideal for capturing whales more than 2,000 feet away from shore and maybe 150 feet below us, but that’s what I had. I took a lot more photos than this, as we witnessed several breaches in a row, but this was the best one. I also photographed them spouting, but from this distance, those plumes look like tiny, rather unspectacular white splashes.

We sat here a good while, waiting to see the pod surface again and hoping for more breaching, but it wasn’t on the menu of events that blew minds on this great day. Well out of sight, was a barking seal that likely wasn’t breaching. As we continued south, we saw more pods spouting in the distance, but taking photos of them didn’t work out; the memories were terrific enough.

Here we go stopping again as we saw more spouting. No seals within earshot, but we did see some pelicans and some old architectural thing. That’s the Big Creek Bridge built back in 1938, just a few miles north of Lucia Lodge, which is also about the halfway point between Pacific Grove and Cambria.

Now, on the next stop for even more whales and some excited Germans looking for wildlife. While the distant cetaceans spouted there would be no breaching, we left quite satisfied I hope the Germans were too.

There comes a point in time when, as daylight is slipping away, my mind goes to work on the geometry of what lies ahead, where we want to be, and the position of the sun in the sky. There’s no reason to be in a less-than-optimal place for sunset, so we have to pace ourselves; hence, this stop to sprawl before it all.

This photo is only here as a reminder that while traveling Highway 1, there is not only the ocean side of things. Not sure you can see it but there’s a house in the center of the image and something like an artists workshop cabin on the right.

This looks promising, but I think there’s better, so we keep going.

But not before I snap this perfect photo of Caroline smiling in the golden late day light on a curvy coastal road with a background of pampas grass, little fluffy clouds, the moon, and sea while wearing her Mayan motorcyclist t-shirt picked up from Taller Leñateros in San Cristobal, Mexico, earlier this year. What a life.

The last stop during daylight hours, as this is the place we’ll watch the sunset. It has vibes of “best spot” to me. We crawled under some barbed wire and stepped onto some crumbling coastline to find the position that would be just right for this curtain call.

We’re still about 20 minutes from Cambria and were not leaving this spot before that sun fully disappears from view. It is Sunday night, and not sure what restaurants will still be open after 8:00. We opt for a poor excuse for a Mexican place in San Simeon, but who cares when we’ve been feasting on all the wonderful sights found on another perfect day?