The Southam Family Road Trip: Monterey Whale watching

The plan start off well, we left our RV Park early so we could be in Monterey for One O’clock to check in for the Whale watching trip. We arrived and one thing that was clear as soon as we pulled up was that the wind was coming off the sea again as it was in San Francisco, we had plenty of time to have lunch in the RV before heading over to another “Fisherman’s Wharf” to get the boat. However when we arrived we were very disappointed to find out that the afternoon trip had been cancelled due to the strength of the wind. After a bit of discussion we decided to change our plans a little and come back the next morning to see if we could get a standby place on the morning trip, so after a few phone calls it was sorted. We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the “fishing village” of Monterey and its neighbour Pacific Grove, before heading off to find the next RV Park this again came with a lack of directions on how to find it. However as this was a working day I was able to speak to a human instead of a machine who gave me the number for the Park Rangers who gave me excellent directions plus the correct information for the SATNAV both brought us to an RV park located out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by vineyards and farm land a beautiful peaceful location with wildlife as much at home in the park as us campers all be it with a very slow internet connection (Hence the lateness in posting this blog).

Tuesday

An early start so that we were at the pier in time to join the queue of hopefuls waiting for no shows on the boat we were warned that the wind was less the previous afternoon but still enough to make the trip “a little uncomfortable”, Esme and Fern decided that they did not fancy the multi-coloured yawn that the conditions might produce and settled for exploring the town on their own with the help of some parent cash, (my expression is wimped out but this does not appear popular) but Alison an I got on the boat and headed out in to the bay. Whales by their nature do not come in to shallow water but the sea bed in Monterey bay has a number of deep subsea canyons which the whales use in their migration from Alaska to Mexico and back and this is where they are normally found. After about two hours of searching in conditions that made standing up for unseasoned passengers a challenge, we were beginning to think that we had made the wrong decision when the sister boat of the one that we were on reported that they had found a small pod of Killer Whales (Orca) so we headed off to join them we were treated to a display of surfing an tail slapping and to see this in the wild and not as part of a show at SeaWorld was an experience to be remembered and certainly made the trip worthwhile. After lunch we headed south to our new destination of Santa Margarita a half way stop on the journey to Los Angeles. Having now decided only to use KOA sites this one was found easily and without too much in the way of challenging driving conditions on the way.