Monterey Bay, August 13th 1995.

Marty and I went to a Bob's concert Saturday evening in Santa Cruz, and stayed in a motel in Salinas just north of Monterey. We would have liked to camp out, but camping spots are always full on Saturday nights. We would have been doubly late arriving after the concert. On Sunday morning, we got up early and drove to the Coast Guard Pier in Monterey to launch the kevlar canoe. (The kevlar canoe is partially canopied, halfway to being a kayak, and is a reasonable vehicle in a mild bay like Monterey). It was foggy when we started out, but it was a thin fog near the water, and it soon burned off. The breakwater and exposed beams in the dock were lousy with sea lions, and the water was boiling in places with their playing bodies. The sea lions were not as shy as I remember them being on all my previous trips here. I guess they are used to all the kayaks now. We were able to paddle much closer to groups of sea lions in the water than I recall being able to, and saw them swimming under the canoe.

On the trip down in the car, we listened to "Cannery Row" by Steinbeck (from Books On Tape), and now we paddled up behind the famous Row itself. I looked for some particularly seedy-looking buildings to go along with "The cannery buildings dipped their tails into the bay". But all of the old cannery buildings have either collapsed or been turned into expensive restaurants or shopping malls. All the previous trips I have made to Monterey Bay have been in very mild water. Looking at the NOAA data before we left home, I was surprised to notice that the swells in Monterey Bay were 7 feet high, about as high as everywhere else. It was as if the bay was offering no protection from the waves this weekend. Sure enough, the water was pretty rough and we were not able to paddle close to shore next to the buildings and past the Monterey Bay Aquarium. When we went around Mussel Point just south of the Aquarium, we went through an area of very large swells, and Marty got a little nauseous. She was angry (at herself) and almost afraid to admit that she was feeling miserable when she was supposed to be having fun on the water. Before the next point, there was a public beach. We wove a path in-between the divers and landed on the beach for a half hour until Marty felt better. Then we wove a path back out through all the trails of bubbles and went around the next point. The waves were not so bad on this point, and we paddled close to several groups of Sea Otters wrapped up in the kelp to doze.

The next point was the end of Monterey Bay itself and the beginning of the official Pacific Ocean. The breakers on this point were the worst so far, so we went farther and farther out to avoid them. The swells got larger and pretty soon there were fishing boats practically swimming circles around us. Before we saw what the waves were like this weekend, I had hoped to go around this point and explore the shore down past Asilomar Beach. Instead, I had to settle for going far enough to get a glimpse of the rocky shoreline from a distance, then we turned back.

When we came back around past the Aquarium, I saw what might have been the feet of a few otters waving out of the water. But one of the otters had a day-glo-orange stripe on her snorkel, so I assumed it was just a couple of divers. Two kayaks cut in front of us about then, and I turned right to go closer to shore to avoid them. I got closer to the divers I had seen, and saw that one of them was waving her hand at the two kayakers and trying to signal them to go away. Meanwhile, two more kayaks came up behind us and crowded me from the right. I was close enough by now to see that what I though was an otter and then a diver, was in fact a diver WITH an otter. Probably a diver from the Aquarium who was preparing an otter for returning it to the sea. The diver finally gave up trying hand signs on the first two kayakers and shouted "BACK OFF!" at them in an angry voice. All the kayaks, including ours, scattered. I was almost mortally embarrassed to have been pulled into such a tawdry affair. Out of politeness, I would never have gotten this close to a wild otter, and a returning one probably needs as little contact with humans as possible. Out of politeness, I usually stay farther than this even from human divers.

We had another traffic jamb of kayaks trying to get past some fishermen in a dingy just before the Coast Guard Breakwater. How disgusting. I'm never paddling here on a weekend again. As we came around the breakwater, there were even more Sea Lions in the water. The tide had come in and evicted a bunch of them from under the docks. So in addition to a lot of young sea lions playing in the water, there were a lot of larger aggressive males now. Instead of frolicking pods of sea lions boiling the water with their play, these aggressive males would snarl and bark and fight with each other on the surface. One group of snarling sea lions boiled up out of the water in front of us and banged into the canoe before they noticed us. Marty says that she almost had a sea lion in her lap. Of course, that frightened them (as well as us) and they fled, splashing huge amounts of water in their panic. I didn't see exactly what happened, because Marty was between me and the sea lions. Marty didn't see either because her eyes and mouth were firmly closed against the deluge. But GALLONS of water came up over the canoe and drenched Marty. Lots of it splashed over her and hit me in the face as well, and it tasted terrible. Several of the watching kayakers cheered and clapped.

The city of Monterey has a campground up on the ridge in the middle of the city in the middle of the peninsula. It is allocated on a first-come first-served basis, and is always full on Friday and Saturday night. On a Sunday night, we didn't expect too much competition, but went up early in the afternoon to reserve a space. This campground used to be free, but now it costs $15.00. The biggest disappointment was that no fires were allowed in the camp due to the high fire danger. We had planned on buying some fresh fish at the Fisherman's Wharf and barbecuing our dinner. The signs around the campground and in the (dis)information booth were extremely vague and slightly contradictory. It was impossible to tell if they meant that we could not have blazing wood campfires (almost assuredly not), if we could have cook fires with briquettes (probably not), or if camp stoves were also forbidden (maybe). The rangers were not to be found to clarify this. The ranger building had a sign on the door, "Register at the [dis]information booth". That evening, when several of our neighbors in the camp had blazing wood fires or briquette cook fires, we decided to risk boiling hot water on our camp stove. The rangers didn't come out to notice any of it.

Before evening, we went looking for a park that might allow barbecuing. We tried to find access to the Monterey State Beach, which is a mile-long park just north of the Fisherman's Wharf. Apparently, the only real access to this beach is from the Fisherman's Wharf parking lot. We tried to stop there, but didn't have any quarters for the parking meters. In our searches, we found a lot belonging to the Naval Postgraduate School, and walked a couple of kilometers in both directions looking for access along a paved bike trail. The dunes between the bike trail and the beach are part of a native-plant restoration project, and there are lots of signs telling us we would be PROSECUTED if we crossed the dune here instead of using "the access". But no signs or maps telling us where that was. Finally we found a boardwalk over the dunes to the beach, a mile from any legal public parking, so there were no picnic facilities. We walked down the beach and back looking for something else, but found nothing.

By now we were frustrated and tired, so we decided to skip the seafood barbecue and go do some bird watching. Marty has a book that describes Carmel State Beach as a nice place near Point Lobos with a marshy area for birding. We tried to find this place, and ran into a similar problem to Monterey Beach: Lots of signs telling you what you will be PROSECUTED for doing, but no signs telling you where things can be found that you are allowed to do. Marty's book describes a parking lot with a gate that locks at sunset. Eventually we found a permanently locked gate that lead to a sand dune, and decided that this must have been a parking lot once. While searching for this, we looked at a bunch of private driveways, and found one unmarked dirt road that went past a daycare center and a private house, but did have a state beach trail-head at the end of it. This didn't turn out to be the right place, but we walked the length of the beach from here looking. The sand was coarsely ground up granite, and was very rough on the feet. The beach sloped very steeply into the water, which was too rough for me to consider putting my ocean kayak in for surf practice while Marty bird watched. We watched a wonderful sunset, and went back to our campsite for dinner in the dark.

We slept well, and got a reasonably late (for camping) start at 7:00am on Monday morning. We wanted to stop at Elkhorn National Estuary Sanctuary on our way home, and go canoeing in Elkhorn Slough. This place was mentioned in the tourist literature available in Monterey. It was also in Marty's birding book with barely adequate and sometimes incorrect directions. Nowhere could we find any mention what the hours were. We hoped it was open early, but found that it is closed on Mondays. I declared that all of Monterey County was going to get a bad review from me for all the lack of documentation.

Fortunately, there was a little county park next door, Kirby Park, that had a boat ramp into the slough. This was all we really wanted. When we drove up to the boat ramp, a blue heron and several egrets flew away. The tide was out, and as we headed west, there were acres of muddy shoreline covered with seaweed and shorebirds. Brown Pelicans dozed on the shore and did a reasonable imitation of lumps of driftwood. We didn't have time to paddle all the way down the slough to the harbor, and turned back. We went into a narrow side channel that wound through the mud flat with banks too high to see over. As we turned in here, we accidentally sneaked up on a Great Blue Heron who took off and flew away complaining about the surprise for a long distance. The muddy banks of this side channel were full of little caves carved by crabs, and the mud was covered with paw prints from the raccoons that eat the crabs.

Back out on the main slough, terns dove into the water around us, and Marty identified one of them as a Royal Tern. But these birds are not supposed to be here until winter. Then we saw a loon, which is also listed as a winter visitor. When we got back to the boat ramp, a flotilla of White Pelicans went over, also only supposed to be here in winter. All this has Marty thinking that the winter migration has already started. I blame this, and any other indication of cold weather, on global warming.