Alex and Alex Across America: 2014

Hi blog readers! Yes, it has been a while since the last update, but Alex and I have not done a lot of roadtrips. But now we did! It was my birthday so we decided to celebrate it the way all right-thinking people should, which is by going to the aquarium.

The aquarium featured OTTERS, which captured Alex's heart with their primitive tool use and itty-bitty paws. We were even lucky enough to see a wild otter not far from the window while eating lunch in the aquarium cafeteria. The aquarium also had some schools of sardines and anchovies, which look like somebody's generative art project as they swirl around, get broken up by other passing fish, and rejoin. Watching a shark pass through a school of sardines* was like watching that trick where you put pepper on water and then drop dish soap into it.

*or maybe they were anchovies. They look very similar, and will even swim in the same schools and when I asked Alex why they tasted so different when they look so much alike, he accused me of being species-ist.

Speaking of anchovies and sardines, we learned that Monterey was the site of a major sardine cannery! It eventually failed because of the end of the Sardine Regime and the triumphant rise of the Anchovy Regime. Apparently populations of these fish cycle every 50 years or so based on variations in climate. It also failed because nobody likes to eat sardines -- well apparently Europeans do, but after WWI and WWII were over they could go back to catching their own sardines. In the US, the canneries found selling sardines as fertilizer to be more profitable than selling them for food.

My other favorite exhibits were the sand crabs, which burrow like ostriches and then scamper up and run to somewhere else and burrow, and the kildeer. At first I thought it was hurt, because its wing was drooping, but then its wing went back to normal. Then reading the placard I saw that the kildeer tricks predators by pretending to have a broken wing. Sneaky! I don't know why it thought we were predators, but I guess it did. Or maybe it was just showing off its acting skills.

The jellyfish were also, of course, awesome. We learned that jellyfish have both a sexual and an asexual component of their reproductive cycle -- first they sexually reproduce to form polyps, and then the polyps clone themselves and produce ephyrae, which then grow up to be medusas. Pretty cool! My favorite jellyfish were the sea gooseberries, small jellyfish that have little cillae that wave in a pattern that causes little rainbows of light to run down their edges and makes them look like they have LEDs installed.

The cuttlefish were also another great color-changing fish, and they just pulsed with stripes, which was very impressive of them.

Finally, there were the puffins and other diving birds, which at first I thought were just off-brand penguins, but they are actually really impressive. Their exhibit is set up like a penguin exhibit, so you can watch them dive. They look exactly like they're flying, but underwater! But they can also fly for real! Take that, penguins! Most of the exhibits at the aquarium are set up so that it's easy to look like a brilliant photographer, but the sea birds move really fast so they didn't photograph well, unfortunately.

This otter didn't do anything with its toy other than carry it around, but it seemed pretty happy with it nonetheless

Anchovies, or maybe sardines

Jellyfish

One of the nice things about jellyfish is that it doesn't matter if Blogger gets the rotation wrong, so enjoy some nice photos of jellyfish. (This joke would have been funnier if Blogger didn't also arbitrarily reorder all the photos in the blog.)

The noble and majestic octopus

I can't figure out how to get Blogger to respect the rotation on this image, so please rotate your monitor 90 degrees to enjoy this sand crab. (See, that joke about the jellyfish makes sense now)

After the aquarium we took some time for Alex's favorite hobby, which is buying fruit-flavored vinegars.

The definitive evidence that this was in fact a ROAD TRIP and not just a trip on the road was that we stayed in a Super 8. Sometime in the evening we were disturbed by a loud sound like banging on the roof. I finally got out to investigate and caught the very tail end of a fireworks show. The motel owner went out to greet me. "It was nice, but I don't know why." she said. "Fourth of July? Nothing. Now? Fireworks."

On Sunday, we woke up early to go to Point Lobos, because we heard that you have to wake up very early to get a parking spot! We got a parking spot. In case you were wondering why it is called Point Lobos (Point Wolves), it is named for the same reason as Point Lobos in San Francisco, and Lobos Rock, which is that it is named for the fearsome Lobo Del Mar, or Sea Wolf.

If you've ever seen them sleeping and pushing each other off the docks at Fisherman's Wharf you might wonder what people find wolvish (or even leonine) about sea lions, but nonetheless, that is what they are called!

At Point Lobos we learned about Dusky-Footed Wood Rats, also known as Packrats, or as they are now called, Extended Version Histories. The Extended Version History builds a huge house that it leaves to one of its daughters, who will then expand it, and so on, and some of those houses can be hundreds of years old.

We learned this fact from our docent! We were really glad we went on the docent led walk, because we learned lots of things about Point Lobos from him. Another thing that was cool about the walk was that there were a few African women from a cultural exchange program that sends women in tech to visit Silicon Valley. I thought it was really neat that women from remote and land-locked countries like Zimbabwe could get a chance to appreciate the California coast, and they seemed to like it (or at least they took a lot of selfies in front of it).

Next, we went on a big hike through Point Lobos. We saw many scenic scenes of water being dramatic, and we also saw the Whaler's Cabin, which was never actually used by whalers, although it was used by Chinese fishermen, Japanese abalone divers, and WWII officers. It was the abalone of Point Lobos that created the American demand (well, such as it is) for abalone, when a German-American chef, Pop Doelter, discovered that you could make abalone taste something sort of like chicken and call it "abalone steak" if you tenderized the hell out of it. Then he posed in these weird marketing photos dressed as a Chinese guy and I just don't get how he marketed himself at all.

Anyway, like I said, the water was very dramatic, and if the water doesn't look dramatic enough in our photos, please watch Rebecca instead, which was filmed at Point Lobos. Actually, you should watch Rebecca anyway, it's really good. I'll wait.

See, aren't you glad you did that? It's a great movie, isn't it?

After Point Lobos, we had a quick wine tasting (as one does), lunch at a French restaurant, and then went off to 17-mile drive, which costs $10 to drive on, and gets you to the famous Pebble Beach Golf Links. After stopping at such points of interest as Sheperd's Knoll (a patch of grass with a bench) Huckleberry Hill (some bushes with a bench) and Poppy Hills Golf Course (a golf course) we were a bit skeptical, but at POI number 8 you actually get to the water and things started to get more fun. We saw a bunch of really beautiful views of the waves, including one angle where there was a rainbow in the foam. Anyway, it's probably pretty boring to read about how there were WAVES and an adorable little DOG and it was REALLY COOL, GUYS, so you'll just have to drive down there and see for yourself, although I can't promise the dog will be there. We also saw the Lone Cypress™, which Alex thought was really not so much Lone as Slightly Ostracized, and watched the sun set over the Pacific Ocean. Then we went to Pebble Beach Golf Lodge, where for some reason Alex really enjoyed looking at the gift shops. And then we went home!