Our host is leaving this morning to attend a funeral in Los Angeles, and Kristin and I are left on our own for a day in Big Sur. Before she left, Lygia took some photos of my sis and me, looking very much twin-like.

The walk to the beach is about two miles down a dirt road that hugs the hillside.

Now we sit naked, or nearly naked, on the beach, watching seals, dolphins, pelicans, seagulls, cormorants, terns, and some other birds I can’t identify fishing and carrying on in the relatively calm waters and kelp beds. Beautiful!

The sand was streaked beautifully with pink from the crumbling rock cliffs.

A floating tree trunk kept us guessing what it might be for quite awhile. the waves would turn it, changing the shape by exposing different sets of truncated branches. Sometimes it looked more animal than vegetable. Like a Nessie sighting.

Then suddenly: what’s that? A humpbacked whale, surfacing and diving just this side of the kelp beds, very close in to shore! It’s huge black rolling back keeps on showing itself for almost enough time for a good photo, and then it disappears again. It’s rare to see humpbacks here, I think. Usually, it would be the gray whales. I feel lucky!

OK. They aren’t very impressive photos, but to see a 66,000-pound creature rolling in the waves is impressive. I guess you had to be there.

I saw a very interesting sight on the beach: on close inspection, I determined that it was an otter who had choked on a seabird, causing them both to die. Weird.

Lulled into complacency by perfect weather, agreeable company and delicious food, I have no more notes about our lovely few days in Big Sur. However, I do have more photos, which I will share here, from our next day’s excursion into the Ventana Wilderness:

Then we wandered north to another beach, and met a very nice goose who seemed to want us to take him/her home.

And finally, back home to Berkeley by late afternoon.

Now that I am caught up with last year’s rambles, I can start on this year’s adventures. I just spent 6 days hiking solo in Sequoia National Park, and there is much to talk about.