Monterey Bay Trip

Our first night we spent at an amazing campsite just past Reno, NV. The reservoir surrounded our campsite on three sides. The sunrise was absolutely beautiful and refreshing!

Once we arrived in Monterey we camped at a state beach! It was so great to wake up to the sound of the ocean. These strawberry fields are what we saw driving between our campsite and the condo. Strawberry field, after strawberry field, after strawberry field!



We spent 8 hours at Monterey Bay Aquarium and could still barely take it all in! It was so amazing! They had an entire section on Jelly Fish from the size of a speck of dust to about 8 feet long! They are so graceful and beautiful but at the same time you know how deadly some can be.


Mr. Penguin checking out the view from underwater. The penquin exhibit was so fun! I think that penguins have so much personality. It was funny to watch the ones contemplating on jumping into the water and the funny one that was claiming another one's cave when that one left. He just moved his stuff right on in while the other one was distracted by food. :)



I just had to take a picture with the penguin statue just for Charity.

Nate and I have always loved looking at the aquariums at Petsmart. Times those by 500 in awesomeness and you have Monterey Bay Aquarium. This is a picture of Nate under an archway tank. There was also a two-story kelp forest tank, a wave tank that blew out over top of you, and so much more.

Ahhh! So cute and so relaxed! The sea otters are a favorite of mine. You just can't help yourself when you see a face and belly and hands so cute and fluffy. We found out that otters have like 1 million hairs per square inch on their coat while humans have approximately 1,000 hairs per square inch on their head. That makes for one soft, fluffy, warm sea otter!

This picture is hard to tell what it is because our camera died before we got very close. This is a picture of Alcatraz Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. We actually got to ride a boat out and tour the old prison and walk around the island. I could see how it would be virtually imposible to escape the prison, I wouldn't be able to swim those turbulent, cold waters. We were able to walk through the prison cells and listen to an audio tour that made it all so real. We also got to meet a man that was a guard there and a man that was a prisoner there for robbing a bank. He said that the prison changed his life, he had learned his lesson.

Here's me on the boat ride back from Alcatraz! We rode at the very front of the boat and enjoyed the ocean splashing up at us as the front end hit the waves. I love the smell of saltwater in the air, especially at our campsite and back at the beach by the condo. But, San Francisco Bay smelled a little fishy. :)

Random picture number 2! You know you are in a desert when a cactus grows back instead of a tree. :) This was on the way to our campsite at the state beach.

This was a little boat along 17 mile drive and the bay was called love boat bay or something like that, I can't remember. But anyway, the name obviously inspired this picture. The boat originally called a glass bottom boat because under that middle canopy would be a glass bottom that you could see through into the ocean. :)

As you can tell by the jackets in almost every picture, it was cold there. Also, this is a pretty mild picture as far as the wild hair goes because the wind was blowing like crazy. I tried to go stand up on the rocks out closer to the ocean and I didn't go very far because I was afraid that the wind would blow me off into the ocean. I'm really not exaggerating. I think this place topped the windiest place on the trip. This was just somewhere along 17 mile drive. So Beautiful though!

The famous lone cypress picture that is basically copyrighted by Pebble Beach Golf. There are signs there that say that you can't use the picture for any marketing purposes. It was really cool to see and it was also really cool to know that the PGA golf tournament would be starting within the next few days. But you can't really see the golf course because they have it fenced so much. I guess you have to pay to play golf if you want to see it.

I just had to show off this amazing picture!

Highway 1 !!! I think that is all that I need to say! We drove along it between Monterey to San Francisco with views like this most of the way!

I finally got to see the Golden Gate Bridge! I have been to California so many times but had never seen this amazing structure. Not only did we see it but we walked onto it and stood under the first large support column. We also got to drive across it!

San Fran Cisco!!! No... I didn't leave my heart there... I brought Nate back home with me :)

Looks like the videos just drop in wherever they feel like it. This video was supposed to be up with the Aquarium pictures. This video is entitled Leafy Dragon... he's there.... you just have to look hard..... :)