I’d guess we stayed up in Seaside last night as that’s what usually met our budget requirements. Before we got over here by Fisherman’s Wharf, we’d have stopped for the first meal of the day.

The Old Monterey Cafe opens early just for us, no kidding. On a previous visit, we met the guy who opened the cafe and prepared the place for its 6:45 opening. He invited us to stop at any time after 6:00 if we were short on time, and he’d get us an early breakfast; he has done so on two or three occasions already. Not only do we like the Cafe, but it has also been voted numerous times as “the” place for breakfast on the Monterey peninsula. After breakfast, everything else in Monterey is still closed, so I drive us over to the north side of Cannery Row near Fisherman’s Wharf for a walk along the beach. Kayakers, joggers, fishermen, a few people walking their dogs, the seagulls, and barking sea lions are our morning company.

It’s still early when we arrive at the Monterey Bay Aquarium for another Aquarium Adventure.

We’re on a Morning Rounds: Behind-the-Scenes Tour that starts at 8:15 on most Sundays; our reservations were made two months ago. Upon arrival, we were handed official Monterey Bay Aquarium aprons just for the occasion. If only we could have kept them. We are mostly old fogeys with only one little girl representing youth. Not to worry, though, we elbow her out of the way to hog all the fun stuff.

Following a brief orientation and the donning of our safety gear disguised as those blue cotton aprons I just mentioned, we were assigned some backbreaking chores doing the dirty work. Here, you see Caroline grimacing under pressure while our guide chides her to put more elbow grease into cleaning these fishy displays.

The next stop was preparing fish by stuffing rather large PILLS into their gills for feeding to unsuspecting penguins. We were told they were vitamins, but those penguins were acting just a wee bit too happy for this to be mere vitamins. Through the labyrinth of the maze known as the-area-behind-the-tanks, we collect more fish to feed other fish witnessing fishnabilism and then look in on how those displays work where the fish swim by in one direction so consistently  – it’s magic! The lady behind Caroline told us that she and her husband (also in the group) were soon to embark on a cruise to Antarctica to see the local penguins and complete her life goal to see penguins wherever they live in the world. Inspirational, to say the least!

Caroline will learn over time that it’s important to be quick on the volunteering thing so she gets the opportunity to feed whatever it was she was offering food to. While my memory says it was a shark, hers says it was a different fish, a detail lost to time. [The whole point of this exercise was to feed critters that stay near the bottom of the exhibit as we are pushing the pole with a basket of fish down to their level. – Caroline]

The smile never left her face.

We were offering the mackerel their breakfast this morning, which did not include eggs as ours did.

Before we are finished with the tour, I am forced to shove my hand into the tank of a man-eating abalone that tears off my right hand above the shoulder. Fortunately, this penguin lover on her way to see Emperor penguins in the Antarctic has her doctor husband along, who grafts my hand back on using the remains of some jellyfish, which is sticky enough to take hold of my hand, allowing it to reattach and I’m happy to say, I have thoroughly healed from my ordeal or something like that. This behind-the-scenes tour was awesome; the staff was informative, friendly, and encouraging of each and every one of us to participate. We look forward to doing it again, except for the part where I was eaten whole by a shark. The tour is a brief two hours long, but we could have stayed all day…except the cold slap of reality, also known as a 700-mile drive home, takes me away from demonstrating otter wrestling, and we leave the Aquarium – unescorted.

The Grotto Fish Market at Fisherman’s Wharf beckons us to have one more clam chowder in a bread bowl and then start our way south.

Nope, we did not take the smart option of driving over Highway 1o1, which is in no way this scenic.

That bump to the right is Point Sur, and on the north end of it is the Point Sur Lighthouse; someday, we’ll make it out there for a tour, but not on this trip.

This is the Brother One Feather art van parked at the Elephant Seal Viewpoint, trippy. Its owner is Jameson Godlove, and can be seen sporting a righteous beard on the right.

Looking at the Pacific Ocean from Highway 46 out of Cambria. From here forward, it was just drive, drive, drive. We arrive back home around 11:00 p.m., and although most anyone who knows us thinks it crazy to drive 1,400 miles for a weekend, we have such extraordinary times doing these kinds of jaunts that we wouldn’t trade a weekend like this for anything in the world.

Disclaimer: This post was not written on or near the date it shows up on my blog. This particular sequence of days wasn’t written about until September 2022 as I was trying to better catalog our travel images on this site.

Additional info: In November 2022, I found a composite post of the three days I wrote four months after our trip on February 26, 2005. I grabbed what was there, merged it into this post, and deleted the other.