I took a couple of extra days off over July 4th weekend and headed down to Pacific Grove (with the kitties and everything!), and yet somehow managed to not dive at all. After the previous weekend's epically bad viz, and the calm flat marine forecast, we decided that we'd rather go whale watching than diving. We ended up doing some whale watching (out of Moss Landing) on Friday, and some otter peeping up the slough on Saturday. We had Lobos reservations on Sunday, but decided to sleep in and head home before traffic got too hideously bad.
Speaking of hideous traffic, apparently getting from the bay area to Monterey on Saturday was terrible. Clinton met us in Moss Landing for the whale watching, and it took like twice as long as usual for him to get there. While we were waiting for him, we put the boat in the water and went out of the harbor to check things out. It was SO foggy, and there were so many little boats out fishing. It was crowded, because I guess no one wanted to go too far out in the fog. So we putted out a bit and found that there were like two whales maybe a half mile from the harbor, which like 5 boats were all crowded around, watching. So we hung out there for a bit, until we heard from Clinton. Then we went back in to retrieve him.
In the short time that we went in to get Clinton and when we got back outside of the harbor, the fog had lifted. Woot! We ended up spending a couple of hours heading from here to there, looking for whales, and while we did see several whales, it was not what you'd call a productive day for the photographers. None of the whales seemed interested in doing tricks. But we still had plenty of fun zooming about in the ducky. After the duckying, we headed back to Pacific Grove for a little BBQ with Kevin and Clinton. Ted was supposed to come down (he was diving on Saturday, so he was going to come for dinner and sleep over), but the 3 hour google maps estimate to get from Anywater Sports to Pacific Grove deterred him. But we drank a few margaritas in his honor.
Saturday afternoon we decided to go for a little adventure up the slough. The timing of the tide was favorable (in that it was less likely that we'd run aground in the shallow parts), so we decided to do it. We've talked about going up there before, but have never done it. After discussing with Jim, it turned out that it probably wouldn't be as scary as we originally thought. And it was not. There was the very small issue that the depth finder had gotten into a funky mode the day before, and so we weren't 100% sure we could believe it when we first started out. But we quickly became convinced, and then everything was fine.
Close to the harbor, there are a lot of people in kayaks on the slough, but we eventually got further up, to where it was wide and deep, and there were hardly any kayakers. There were lots of otters, and a variety of birds. We even saw a (pretty big) baby otter on top of its mom, which had the benefit of having a nice dry, fluffy, teddy-bear-looking face. Rob had a more productive photography day than the previous day. At some point it began to drizzle a little bit, so we were riding back in the rain. It never got too wet though.
Speaking of hideous traffic, apparently getting from the bay area to Monterey on Saturday was terrible. Clinton met us in Moss Landing for the whale watching, and it took like twice as long as usual for him to get there. While we were waiting for him, we put the boat in the water and went out of the harbor to check things out. It was SO foggy, and there were so many little boats out fishing. It was crowded, because I guess no one wanted to go too far out in the fog. So we putted out a bit and found that there were like two whales maybe a half mile from the harbor, which like 5 boats were all crowded around, watching. So we hung out there for a bit, until we heard from Clinton. Then we went back in to retrieve him.
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