Leon Turnbull Photography

With my new job starting this week we decided to make a quick trip over to the ocean at Monterey Bay to celebrate the new job and get a last vacation before the new job started.

We went over on Saturday morning and spent the day at the aquarium. Lots of fun of course for the kiddos. Lots of fun for me too because we saw quite a lot of wildlife this trip: dolphins, seals, sea lions, sea otters (including a very cute baby). The next morning I got up super early to drive down to McWay Falls. It is the only waterfall flowing at the coast right now so I wanted to get down to see it even though I have been here many times before and already have good photos of it. I know this is a sunset place not a sunrise place but this was the only time I had to go there. I wanted to do something a bit different here so I decided to arrive well before sunrise and try photographing the waterfall in the pre-dawn hour. This was my result. The exposure is F/8, 30 seconds, and was taken 25 minutes before sunrise. It was fun being at the overlook in the dark and being the only one there. It is such an amazing place. There were no clouds and no interesting sunrise but I did hike up to the upper falls before going back to the hotel to meet up with the family.

I did see some writing on the beach made by some idiots who went down there in recent days. It is not legal to go down to the beach here. The cliffs are crumbly and delicate and even one person going down would cause a lot of environmental damage. I do not think it would be too difficult, however, to get down. I would never do it but I do (rather often) think about doing it. I think though that if I ever did go down here it would forever ruin the location for me afterwards. From the overlook the waterfall and beach seem so pristine, so stunning, and so out of reach. It would not be so after going down to it.

When we were at the Coast last month, we went one day to the Elkhorn Slough in Moss Landing. We walked around there, and saw plenty of bird wildlife. Afterwards, we stopped at the beach there for lunch and to let the kids play on the beach. They had a lot of fun playing in the waves. Daddy had a bit of fun too taking pictures. These little sanderlings were running along the beach while we were there, scooping up little tidbits to eat that they found on the shoreline. They let me get pretty close to them, until a jogger came running along to the beach and scared them away. All in all, it was a very fun day.

This is a sunset we saw at the Monterey coast. It was nothing very spectacular. In fact, it really bombed. This was the most color that I witnessed and it did not last very long. At first though, the sunset seemed quite promising. We were going back to our motel from the day’s outing, and the clouds looked not too bad, so I suggested to my wife that we go down to the beach for sunset. She was all game for that of course. So while the kids played on the beach, I was off to take pictures. I decided to walk up on the dunes overlooking the beach and ocean and settled on this spot. Another photographer had this plan also, and he also agreed with me that the sunset bombed that night. Oh well.

In the meantime, my wife and kids found about a “million” dead jellyfish on the beach. I did not see them as I was up on the dunes, but she said it was very odd. It was also around this day that a large number of fish had washed up on shore south of here. And interestingly enough, this was the day before the big earthquake in Japan. Was this all a coincidence? I wonder.

We found these harbor seals hanging out on the rocks at Point Lobos State Reserve, near Monterey. They kept looking up at us as we peered down at them, no doubt wondering why we were looking at them for so long. It was interesting because there were quite a few people in the area, but we were the only ones that were watching the seals. There was even an old lady sitting back on a chair looking at the ocean, but oblivious to the presence of the seals below. I had the strong feeling while we were at the coast that things like seals, sea lions, and cormorants, etc. are so common over there that the people just say, yeah whatever, another seal, what’s the big deal? For us inlanders, though, seeing animals like this is cool. It is not like we get to see them very much in Sacramento. 🙂

This one was surprisingly a nice little waterfall. I was not expecting to find very much of anything here. The trail from the road is really short, but it is not exactly easy. I had to literally take off my backpack and crawl under a big log across the trail on my belly, right beside a steep dropoff. Then after this, there is a very steep descent to get down to the creek level (short, but difficult). Once down at the creek, I just worked my way up to the falls. There was a second creek coming in here which had a pretty nice cascade on it as well, and with a bit more water it would be a nice photo opportunity as well. But I headed up the bottom of the falls on Redwood Gulch Creek. I quickly realized that I needed to get right in the middle of the creek to photograph it. I did not have my water shoes with me, so I went barefoot, but it was not too difficult and not too cold. My wife thought the water at Salmon Creek was freezing. I laughed at her (sorry, dear), because it definitely was NOT cold. I have been in freezing cold water before from snow melt, but the creeks here at the coast were downright balmy in comparison. Anyway, I enjoyed my time here at Redwood Gulch. The waterfall is not a big one, but it is a pretty one.

More info on Redwood Gulch Falls:
http://waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=1515