Carmel and Big Sur

Another weekend, another out-of-town adventure!
My lil sister returned to the states after 3.5 months abroad, where she was volunteering.  She arrived home late last week, so we welcomed her home...and sort of repeated our Easter weekend festivities so she wouldn't have to miss out any longer on those fun days!

We hiked at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park again, wanting to show her McWay Falls.  We picked an equally great day to visit:

On the drive down to Big Sur, we stopped a few times to see various wildlife.  Below is as zoomed in as I could get to several seal pups.  Not entirely sure if they are harbor seals or elephant seals, but they were really loud!  They were jumping in and out of the water.

We also saw numerous turkey vultures.

A few locals had their scopes on a California condor, but my photos didn't turn out, it was really far away.

But then on the hike back from the falls, we saw what we think was a second condor!  These guys have a 9-foot wing span.  And they are rare, so we were pretty impressed by the sightings.

Finally, to round out the nature scenes for the weekend, Sunday morning we went bodysurfing at Carmel Beach and caught some great waves.  And half-way through the session, W saw out of the corner of his eye something grey jump out of the water.  He said he thought it was either a surfer jumping off his board into the air, or a dolphin jumping in the waves.  Sure enough, a few seconds later we saw a pod of dolphins swimming closer to us, riding in the waves.  There were two really small dolphins and three adults; later a few more joined for a total of 8 or so.  The pod swam north and south along the coast and both times they passed by, they were incredibly close to us!  We don't think we have ever seen the dolphins in so close to shore; it was an absolutely incredible experience!

Anyway, fun weekend and great nature sights in Carmel and Big Sur.  This Spring weather has been such a treat.