Leon Turnbull Photography

My wife and I headed over to the coast for the weekend, sans kids, to celebrate our birthdays this month. Both of our happy days are at the end of January (well as happy as you can be at my age). My wife loves the ocean and beach, and I was hoping to see some waterfalls of course. The bad news though is that it has not rained in January. Why is it that whenever I plan a big waterfall vacation to the CA coast, I always pick dry times of the year! It happened last year and the year before as well. It was going to be interesting to see if the falls were all completely dry or not, I did not have my hopes too high.

We arrived very early at this waterfall, called Andrew Molera Falls after the state park that it is in. It is very easy to get to but I had never been here before so thus I was anxious to remedy this silly faux pas.

Andrew Molera Falls is an ugly waterfall. Seriously. There are fallen logs all over the place at this waterfall. I can think of other waterfalls where fallen logs across the falls actually enhance the waterfall’s beauty and character (Russian Gulch Falls, Lion Slide Falls). But the fallen logs across Andrew Molera Falls do no such thing. Ah well, what can you do? Well, you can look for alternative viewpoints. And that is what I did. My wife stayed at the overlook while I scally wagged down the hill to the creek, crossed it, then made my way up and around fallen logs, and down to the base of the falls. Whew. Once down I realized I would have to get my feet wet, getting into the creek and climbing up a mini cascade where I could get the view point I wanted. My wife, watching me from afar, said I looked like a hobbit with bare feet and rolled up pants, scampering in the creek. It was fun though and pretty cool standing under the fallen logs and looking up at the 35 ft. high waterfall. Did I make this ugly waterfall look pretty? You be the judge.

As for the flow … well it was not dry! It was actually flowing better than I expected and it was the same thing at our next stop (Pfeiffer Falls). So this gave me some hope for the rest of the weekend.

The one bad thing that happened here though? Tara somehow picked up a tick while sitting here waiting for me. She did not notice the thing biting her until the next day and it was bad by then. I don’t understand how she could not notice a tick biting her that long but this was the only possible place she could have picked it up. When we got home she went to see the doctor and is on antibiotics to be on the safe side and we pray this will keep her from getting any nasty disease. Other than this (oh and the hotel reservation mess up – sigh) we had a great time at the coast.

When we were at Monterey a couple weeks ago, we saw this very cute baby sea otter and its mama in the water very close to the dock at around sunset. The baby made such a cute little squeaking sound. I was able to get some great closeup shots of it until my camera battery finally died (I had left the backup back in the car), but no matter I was very happy. There was also a sea lion cruising around them at this moment trying to cash in on some free crab, but the mama and baby are watching it closely.

Just a short distance above stunning McWay Falls lies a lovely little tiered waterfall which I call Upper McWay Falls. It is fairly easy to get to and flows on the same creek as the lower McWay Falls. In other words, it also flows year-round.

After shooting McWay Falls at sunrise, I took the short hike up to the upper falls. It is an easy hike to the bottom of the 3 tiered waterfall, but it is a bit tricky scrambling up to the upper tier, which is the prettiest section. It drops 32 ft. into a hidden alcove. It reminds me a lot of Hole In The Wall Falls in the Columbia River Gorge, Oregon because of how it curves around inside the alcove. I spent quite a lot of time here shooting this one, and I may or may not have removed a lot of ugly logs and debris that may or may not have been at the base of the waterfall. I can’t really remember. Photographers have a very short memory when it comes to things like that.

Anyhow, it was a fun morning. I grabbed some coffee in Big Sur on my way back to Monterey to meet my family, and we spent the rest of the day enjoying the beach, playgrounds, and touring the Carmel mission (which was quite interesting), and then enjoying a big pizza dinner, followed by a walk on the fisherman’s wharf where we saw a cute baby sea otter from up close.

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.