The Happy Girl: Week 4

Day one of our 4th week was a beautifully sunny day - we drove from San Luis Obispo up to Monterey via Hearst Castle and Big Sur

Probably the funkiest Harley Davidson custom bike we have seen so far-we are parked alongside it

The happy girl

Golden poppies covered acres of fields around the coastline

The cliff edges are prone to landslip and falling rocks which need urgent repair by cliff experts

Most of our drive was along the edge of these cliffs!

This area is beautiful and was the view from a small house owned by a very rich lady. Just before she died she donated it and the land around to the state.

Below is a photo of me standing on what was the terrace of the house, looking from the

other side of the house.

We went for a little stroll to see the 60 foot Pfeiffer Falls - We expected to see something like the Niagara - instead we saw what looks more like a trickle of water (see left of photo above)

SNAKES !!!!Walking back from an old water wheel we found quite a few young snakes - ok they were small.................. but still I am not ashamed to say I ran up the steps and away pretty fast!

We stopped here to have a mini picnic - hard life eh!

Bixby Creek Bridge constructed in 1932 and at the time was the longest single span concrete bridge in the WORLD - Oh yeah we know all the best stuff!

The route "one"highway took us to Monterey-where we found the OLD FISHERMAN'S GROTTO in Fisherman's Wharf.

An amazing family owned fish restaurant established in 1950-voted to have the best clam chowder in Monterey since 2004. I had prawns, salmon, lobster tail and scallops and maybe a calamari starter!!!!!

We went to the Monterey Aquarium today - OMG it was amazing - so interesting, well organised and clean.

We saw a 1 million gallon tank full of Tuna, Hammerhead sharks, ocean sun fish, sardines and giant turtles.

They had a fun living jelly fish exhibition with psychedelic signs and funky 70's music.

I think this one was the lions mane jellyfish-

Glow in the dark ones!

the deadliest Jelly fish is called the Sea wasp which will kill you

There was even feeding time done by a human, hand feeding the sharks

Remind you of an animated film character anyone?

Guess what this is below....

Possibly the most wonderful seahorse we have ever seen - the photos do not do it justice

Some cool sea horses.

Oh I think I had one of your relatives for dinner last night ....woops....sorry!

This albatross is a very clever dancing albatross. Sadly it was injured and cannot fly anymore.

A 21 fingered star fish which started with only 5 fingers and keeps growing more

Otters were so much fun - we watched them being fed and playing with giant pieces of coloured ice.

Todays educating fascinating fact is below......see you learnt something new!!

This is a Octopus that is HUGE and has eyes that just stare at you, saying you are my lunch!!!!

He is hand fed too by a marine specialist!!!!

Penguin feeding time each fish was hand fed and a girl monitored how many they ate

Thankfully there is a very thick 7 inch piece of glass between me and the shark!

Behind us and below are the old sardine factories which are now tourist shops, hotels and restaurants

The aquarium was also in an old sardine processing plant - did you know Dalton it was the Chinese who started the whole commercial fishing industry on the coast of Monterey

We found the ground covering purple plants that were along the ocean edge

Tonights sunset was overlooking the rocks and ocean waves at Pacific Grove

Ran out of camera battery so took these on my iPhone-good olde Apple

so we stopped at another beautiful beach and had a small picnic but it was FREEZING!

We watched birds

Breakfast and a good view!

More seals and Sea lions

Pelicans

we stopped again at Carmel and had a lovely walk on the beach - a little windy but warm sand!

The lonely Cypress Tree on the 17 mile drive- i'll be your friend Mr. Tree!

On our way to Yosemite we stumbled across the Mariposa Butterfly carnival day and pulled over before we became part of the procession

These children are part of the main parade for their part in hand rearing thousands of butterflies
which they release into the woods on this day

This ones for you guys Wayne and Trevor - there were over 50 classic American cars

Ravi's favourite car from the parade is above and was

followed by old trucks, jeeps and more musical floats

This is the 49 chapter of the Hells Angels of Mariposa-An interesting bunch who were the local nice guys until you upset them-then you were dealing with Mafia like behaviour

A bit of the 'Olde Wilde West ' on this float-I'll have a saaaaaaaaasparella ma'am!

Our favourites were these organic farmers promoting healthier eating- check out junior broccoli

YOEMITE National park - The Merced River

We were lucky enough to see this rainbow that occurs once a day!

This is El Capitan and if you look carefully you will see some climbers on the shady side of the rock

Pretty wild flowers

Hi Ravi, Wish you were here?

Oh you are here! Happy honeymoon.

On our way up to Glacier point to see sunset
Unbelievable from sun to snow in an hour

I'm in there somewhere!

Wating for sunset

This was our view from the top.We were lucky that Yosemite had only had about a third of it's normal snowfall so all the roads were open and cleared of snow.

This rock is called Half Dome-if you carefully you can see an elephants face and ear

So by sheer fluke we happened to be about 7000ft up a mountain staring at the 13000ft peaks other side
and a nice Japanese photographer tells us its a full moon tonight and the moon is larger tonight to view as its closer to the earth - this cycle takes 100 years to repeat

This is the Californian Tunnel tree. Back in the early 1900 the locals cut this tunnel through the tree to drive their wagons through

The largest tree in Mariposa grove

These are called snow cones and come out just after the snow has melted and
stick around for a couple of weeks

This one is called the Faithful couple as it it two trees that have joined!!

These two photos are just for a size guide!

This one is called the clothespin

The Fallen Wawona Tunnel Tree

Another scale/size photo

The Telescope tree. this tree has been hollowed out over the years and the photo has been taken from the base looking up to the sky. The photo below is the outer part of the tree and you can see it is fully alive and still growing!