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A roadside stall for Leis



My Latest 8 diary entries:

Pete's Churchill Odyssey 2005

10th Oct 2005
Cruising from Cruz to Yosemite

Monday 10th October, 2005
A fantastic morning; quite cold but really bright and I took a wander back down the water front first thing and took some shots of the palm trees and the bay. We were due to drop into the Patagonia Outlet store on the edge of town to stock up on some kit and it opened at 10.
Before we left, Anne made a few phone calls to sort out accommodation in Yosemite for tonight and tomorrow. There had been various recommendations in the last couple of weeks, regarding an hotel called The Ahwahnee, (The magnificent Ahwahnee, The beautiful Ahwahnee was how it was described …) and it seemed like a great idea … particularly in the aftermath of a cold night spent in the car. However, scrutiny of the tariff sheet on line made me decidedly nervous and with Anne in charge of the booking anything might have happened.
As it was, I heaved a sigh of relief when she announced that we were booked into the Curry Camp … in a tent … but that she had gone for the more expensive option, which was a heated tent!
There remained the option of The Ahwahnee for breakfast.
We found our way to the Farmers exchange and found a coffee bar and sat out in the sun supping great coffee, eating pastries and catching up on journals.
The Patagonia shop duly opened at 10 and we set too, getting a number of bits and bobs for immediate use and others for home.
As we left Anne, decided to raise the issue of the tyre … I’d completely forgotten … we’d driven a hundred and something miles and it was holding up fine. However, the female logic works differently and so it was that we ended up in Lloyd’s tyre emporium, just along the road and parting with $20 to get the thing sorted.
It took half an hour and offered another opportunity to lie around in the sun. It was only just as matters were drawing to a close that I wandered into the office and found, on the wall, a couple of pictures of the outside of the building taken in 1940 when ‘Lloyd’ first set himself up.
I took a couple of snaps of the images and then re-took them outside on the street … the first re-takes I’ve done for a few days.
We were bound for Monterey for a look at the aquarium and Anne also fancied a look at 17-mile drive as a snapshot introduction to the Big Sur coast … so it was turning into a busy day.
We drove through the main food producing country of California, fields of strawberries, artichokes and groups of pickers all working out in the heat, mostly in hoodies with them pulled right up over their heads.
We parked in Monterey at about 1 and went straight in to the Aquarium; SUPERB.
Massive tanks, loads of space … everything from jellyfish to sharks to sea otters. Tanks of kelp beds, deep water habitats and all presented with very clever lighting … either natural light channelled in or in the deep water tanks very strong strobes to pick out the specimens. In the background, sufficient to quell the babble of visitors, background music … slow and sonorous for the deep stuff and somehow appropriate to the various other exhibits. The shark section avoided the Jaws theme and went for a variety of native chants to highlight the position of the shark in various cultures; Amazon indians, Haida, Maori and Aboriginal.
They have an aviary with various wading birds in a wetland habitat (which was a little strange), a touch pool with some fairly frisky rays hurtling around getting patted and petted at every turn and a room like a conservatory where every minute or so you get the sound of the roaring of the waves and then gallons of water crashes over the casing and into the rock pool exhibit surrounding the glass outside. Its as if you become a rock in a rockpool.
The kelp tank must be about forty or so feet deep … certainly on two storeys … and the inhabitants surge up and down in the tank in front of you.
At regular times they fed the sea otters … which has the potential to be a bit of a circus event. It was bordering on this but I stayed on the lower floor where I could watch them as they came underwater and avoided the view of the keeper with the microphone up above.
The otters are provided with toys and they have tunnels to explore in their tank. At feeding, they are given tubes stuffed with fish and they roll around shaking the tubes in order to get the fish out … I don’t think there was a way they could use ‘tools’ (stones) like they do in the wild, but later we saw a few offshore lying ‘tied off’ to kelp and working away at shells on their stomachs.
We stayed rather longer than anticipated at Monterey; it’s a fabulous place.
We then found our way along the 17 mile drive … in hindsight what we should have done was the 5 mile coast bit and skipped the endless switchbacks and junctions and speed limits of the rest which took us in to some really salubrious real estate and through Pebble Beach, with its world famous golf course.
We eventually found our way on to the right road to get slightly north and then east for Merced and Yosemite.
It was not an easy road at all and we even had trouble in Merced, trying to find the right road out to the Park. Amazing how poorly signposted it all was and after several stops to ask directions and a final pass through a junction, we eventually saw a half obscured sign for Yosemite.
Approaching the park in darkness, we became aware of the winding road working its way into the valley and large pale patches up on the sides against the night sky… large areas of pale grey granite, bare of all but occasional trees.
Inside the park, we drove through the entrance archway, where the road is carved out under two massive boulders and headed up to Yosemite village.
The darkness is complete in here, but in the light of the half moon it is just possible to pick out the massive gorge, sides of the valley. We drove up the south side and could look across at El Capitan and pick out the pinpricks of lights on the face where four separate climbing parties were scaling the wall.
At Camp Curry, I checked in at the desk, had to read and sign a very prescriptive statement about ‘Bear discipline’ which involved the storage of anything vaguely scented in metal storage lockers provided with each tent. This included any food items but also any toiletries … even water bottles that the bears might be able to associate with humans and so with food.
Given that this was pitch dark and about ten o’clock at night, and that we didn’t have a torch and that our tent was way up the top of the camp away from the cars (Tent No 465), Mrs Moore was in reasonable humour as we stumbled our way up though the camp trundling our luggage.
The tent was fine, they’d left a light on in it and we’d soon got everything inside. I nipped off the our bear locker to put a couple of bags inside and then went back down to the car to move my camera gear up to the tent.
As I padded quietly through the camp, it was almost a spiritual experience; you could hear very little other than a general buzz of muffled conversation from the masses of other tents. It was like walking through a huge cathedral at night, the detail of which was gradually becoming clearer as my eyes adjusted. The night’s sky bright and brilliant overhead, framed by the valley rim about 3000 feet above. There were occasional people out enjoying the tranquillity of the scene, standing gazing up at the stars … and as I walked along this hallowed trail in the general direction of where I thought we’d left the car, I had the bright idea of clicking the button on the key fob in order, as soon as I got with in range of having the car lights flash to guide me to it.
Now the trouble is, that in America, there are a number of buttons on these key fobs and, (from the top) they unlock or lock the car, open the boot and the button at the bottom is red (which you can see if its daylight) and its marked ‘Panic’. It’s the one you never press as it sets the car off into flashing lights and honking horns for three minutes quite possibly activating a hotline to the National Guard in the process.
There’s nothing you can do to interrupt it until its run its term.
Well, need I go on ? … I think I’d better;
Unfortunately as this tranquil and spiritual; experience was overwhelming me ... I clicked the worng button.
HONK … (oh, S@£t !!!). Runs up to car frantically clicking any (and probably every) HONK, button I can press HONK, to try to get it to shut up; HONK, nothing. HONK … lock the car. HONK, Unlock the car, HONK. Get in the car HONK, HONK. Start the car, HONK, Reverse the car, HONK … HONK … HONK … HONK. Park the car again, HONK. Get the instruction booklet out of the glove locker, HONK (at least ten times). Read the booklet, more HONK. Follow instructions, HONK, HONK, HONK. Shut door, lock the car (HONK) unlock the car, Eventually …. blissful silence returns to Yosemite and, from the hundreds of happy campers at Camp Curry ... my new friends ... I received a round of applause !
I took a fairly wide detour away from the vicinity, very quickly (!) and duly returned to tent to find wife ensconced by the heater. The news that, errr … well … yes … it was our car alarm going off, was met with frosty disbelief. But by this time the humour of the whole situation had fully overcome me and, within the sanctuary of the tent, I was rolling about the place, I thought it was so funny.

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Diary Photos

Jelly fish at Monterey

The kelp tank at Monterey

lunch at Monterey

The mackeral tank

Santa Cruz

Another life sized cast

Orca, Monterey
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