Winter By The Bay

Ice cold water sends a brief shock from my toes, up my legs, as the Pacific rushes up the beach I was standing on, watching the waves roll onto the small beach. I look back at my boyfriend Tyler and smile, giddy from the gentle waves. It was a ritual I practiced every time I encountered the ocean, dipping my toes in the water every time I’m on the coast. This time we were in Monterey, on a weekend trip to visit the aquarium and enjoy our time together. It is nice to have a special someone in your life that will hold your things while you take a dip in the ocean, go shell hunting with you, and not bat an eye at how much sand we will be finding in the car long after our trip.

We got to our hotel under the cover of darkness, it was one of those moments where you are exhausted from the drive, you cannot see the ocean, but it’s there, when one of your senses fails the others take over. The salty air, the crashing of the waves along the rocks of the coast, it was thrilling to know what was waiting for us the next morning. By a miracle, we were on the sidewalk heading to Cannery Row by 9:00 am. Breakfast was coffee (tea for me), and sandwiches from Tidal Coffee on a park bench in Plaza de Monterey that looked out onto the bay.

We were at the aquarium for 5.5 hours, we saw everything and we got to see it on our own time. That pace is on the slow side, but we had fun, we learned a lot, we made sure to ask a lot of questions when we could. The highlights of the visit were the sea otters. What I didn’t know was Monterey has the best surrogacy program for orphaned sea otters and are then released back into the wild once rehabilitated. The Tentacles exhibit with the octopus, squid, cuttlefish, and nautilus (which is the name of the underwater ship in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne) what thrilling, and the octopus were very active that afternoon.

Feeling accomplished, we walked back to our hotel room to get ready for dinner. We braved the California January weather and had dinner on the patio with an ocean view. Pasta and shrimp shared between the two of us washed down with a Moscow Mule. It was a good trip, I was thankful for the time I got to share it with Tyler and I wised up and charged my camera for the trip.

There was always something about visiting the coast that provided me with a natural reset with an inhale of fresh air and wading through freezing waters. Someday, I would love to fully submerge in the water, feel it surround me as I breach for crisp early spring air, and find myself in the open arms of a warm towel. Always wanted to try it, maybe I should do something about it.