Summer is a good time to leave Austin, TX. We left on July 23, which happened to coincide with Claire's visit to Houston. Can't have everything.
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Family Dinner
In other years, we have taken the slow route to the west coast, dallying in southeastern Arizona, for example. This year, we decided to drive more of less straight to the LA area to visit some of Linda's cousins that we hadn't seen in several years. We gathered for dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Los Alamitos, near where Uncle Jack Findlay is living now. The main activity of the evening, besides eating of course, was passing around pictures of Kai and Kiera, which elicited the expected oohs and aahs.
We explored Orange County, which is quite different from when we lived there, but Irvine has held up nicely. We located our old house with the help of Honey, our GPS lady, and visited some of the spots we remembered birding 30 odd years ago. Then we drove up the coast a short distance to Ventura.
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Island Race of Western Fence Lizard
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Monkey Flower
The next day, we took a boat ride to Channel Islands National Park, a series of nearby islands, the only home of the Island Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma insularis). This bird was split from the Western Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma californica) a few years back. It is quite a bit larger than that bird, an example of island gigantism. We had a nice hike on the island, spotting a flock of the jays and several other island endemics. The boat ride over and back was also a lot of fun, especially the close looks as Common Dolphins (Delphinus delphis). Our captain spotted a pod of several hundred of these and slowed the boat so we could have a good look. Immediately, about 20 or so of the dolphins detached from the feeding group and swam over to out boat, seemingly just for the hell of it. They swam circles around the boat, even when we sped up, and surfed on the bow wave. They seemed to be just having fun.
A leisurely drive up highway 1, surely one of the best road experiences in the world, took us to Monterrey, where we met the rest of our clan for a visit to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. Our newly acquired membership, got us into the private dining area as well as the aquarium itself, a bargain. Linda took this nice picture of a Leafy Seadragon, Phycodurus eques, one of our favorite animals of the visit.
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Leafy Sea Dragons.
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Kai and Kiera Try On Thai Hats
Kai and Kiera did not wear the hats Linda bought in Thailand during our visit to the Aquarium.
The following morning, we split up and all sampled the delights of Monterrey Bay in our own way. Claire and Ron went kayaking, which the rest of us sought out sea otters and other marine mammals from a larger boat. Then while everyone else drove back home, the two of us took another trip to look for whales. We were rewarded with some fantastic sightings of Humpback Whales and two views of Blue Whales. The latter were larger than the boat we were on, but quite a ways off. They were easy to tell from the Humpbacks by the different color and the comically small dorsal fins on the largest animal ever to inhabit this planet.
We spent a week in the Bay Area visiting our kids and looking for houses before setting out again.
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The Tetons
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Wyoming Ground Squirrel
We tried to plot a route from Philo, where we wound up with the kids, to Jackson Hole, WY, via Idaho. Turns out that is quite difficult. Google maps kept sending us back to the Bay Area, so we gave up and just went from there. Had to skip Idaho for the most part as well, except for a short stay in Idaho Falls. (We saw our first Muskrat there while walking down by the river.)
We made it to Grand Teton NP in time for dinner on our third day of driving. It had been several years since we visited the area. We found it somewhat changed, but with the timeless peaks to remind us why we like the area. We spent a couple of days exploring the area, including a rafting trip down the Snake River. We spotted several Elk and Moose on the river, but had the best look from the parking lot at the take out point. Alas, it was a bit too far away, on the opposite bank of the river, for a good photo. We had to content ourselves with photographing the charming Wyoming Ground Squirrels (or maybe the virtually indistinguishable Uinta Ground Squirrel), which was common in the area near our room.
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Grizzly and Bison Eye Each Other
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Yellow-bellied Marmot (Marmota flaviventris)
Our next stop was Yellowstone National Park, last visited in 1965 or thereabouts. It was quite a bit different. Lots of people speaking many different languages. We hit all the high spots in the park: Old Faithful, Mammoth Hot Springs, Lake Yellowstone, and even the far northeastern part of the park in an unsuccessful search for Gray Wolves. We were about 30 minutes too late according to people we met there. We did, though, get to watch a fascinating confrontation between a Bison and a Grizzly Bear. The bear spent half and hour carefully sneaking closer to the bison. We thought it might attempt a kill. However, the bison simply turned to face the bear, as shown in the photo to the left, and the bear moved on. We were impressed by the size of the bison next to a grizzly.
As we left the park, Linda spotted a Yellow-bellied Marmot posing for a photo on a large boulder, and took this picture. We had seen another one earlier in our visit, but this one was much closer. Several photos from Yellowstone and Grand Teton are included in our Mammal photos for the year.
Finally, it was time to head for Austin. We stopped in Colorado on the way to visit our former foster daughter Rosalind and her family, and our good friends the Cloudmans in their fantastic new home in Boulder. Then two brutal days of driving brought us back to Austin.
