Monterey Wildlife

After the mission, we made a few stops at some of our favorite places to take in coastal wildlife...

The Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, where the butterflies were fluttering around more than they were clumped up in the trees.  We're thinking that was because it was a warm sunny day.

The ocean, where we watched huge waves crash into the rocks.

And got up close to the pelicans on the rocks.

And touched sticky anemones and crawling crabs in the tide pools.  

And climbed around with the help of adventurous Daddy, especially those of us with fragile bones!

The last thing we did on this day was take a walk down Fisherman's Wharf.  Here we watched the fishing boats, coming in for the day, cleaning their haul.  This was a highly entertaining feeding frenzy as the fishermen tossed fish guts and heads to the crowd of hungry and aggressive pelicans and seals waiting outside their boat.
 

Dave made friends with this fellow.

We also got to see lots of up-close otters, seals and sea lions.

All this ocean wildlife was a great little appetizer to the feast of it we'd explore the next day at the aquarium...