06 Dec
Location
Home
Days adrift.  Click here to see our best and worst experiences so far.
5247
Number of flights.  Click here to go to the itinerary page.
35
Bus, train and taxi rides.  Click here to see all posts relating to transport. (56 posts)
185
Miles walked.  Click here to see all posts relating to walking and trekking. (43 posts)
581
Countries visited.  Click here to see what we think of them. (14 posts)
15
Number of species spotted.  Click here to go to our wildlife page.
1157
Photos taken.  Click here to go to the photo gallery. (105 posts)
13288
Rainy days.  Click here to find posts relating to the weather. (50 posts)
63
Number of times scammed.  Click here to read all about it!  (2 posts)
1
Otters spotted.  Click here to go to our website about otters: amblonyx.com
45
 
...two travellers in search of the world's wildlife

Archive for May, 2016


30 May 2016

Whale of a whale-watching day

2 May 2016 Monterey is one of the top whale-watching destinations in the world, and today we got a good idea why. We went for a morning trip, and there are loads of good reasons to do that: (1) it’s longer than the afternoon trip, (2) if they see something very cool, they can stay » » »



29 May 2016

See sea otter day

1 May 2016 This morning we went kayaking on Elkhorn Slough. What is a slough, you cry? It’s a slow-moving river/estuary attached to the sea, a sheltered tidal waterway, home to plenty of wildlife. And at Elkhorn Slough you cannot fail to find yourself kayaking with sea otters! The local wildlife protection rules say you » » »



29 May 2016

Eastern fox squirrel surprise day

30 April 2016 So now we’ve had two AirBnB experiences, and they’ve both been very different. In San Francisco we had a lovely studio apartment in an old Victorian building that survived the 1906 quake. It was furnished with antique pieces and as fully equipped as you could hope. Indeed, it even came with a » » »



22 May 2016

Pavement Pounding Day

29 April 2016 Today we took a long and winding route through many neighbourhoods into the middle of the city. Our trek took us from the very lovely areas around NoPa where we’re staying, and Hayes Valley with all its trendy shops and cafes (we made sure we started late enough for the shops to » » »



22 May 2016

Mission to Mission day

28 April 2016 Wow, they are laaaaa-zy in California. We got out around 9ish, late by our standards. So we wandered into the Hayes Valley area and found a good cafe/bakery for breakfast. Something that’s going to be coming to the UK in a big way soon (well, actually I’ve already seen it in a » » »



22 May 2016

Superior skunk day

27 April 2016 Well, I’m calling this Superior Skunk Day ‘cos strictly speaking this is the day we got great views of a nifty little skunk. The only other animal likely today was the Sonoma chipmunk at Muir Woods, but although we had a nice walk there and hung around the picnic area a while, » » »



22 May 2016

Bobcat bonanza day

26 April 2016 We started our day super-early, heading out before sunrise so that we could look for sewellel on the highest part of Point Reyes. The sewellel is a primitive form of rodent, also called a “mountain beaver”, that is very elusive and lives on plants other animals can’t digest like ferns and rhododendrons. » » »



21 May 2016

Rambunctuous raccoon day

25 April 2016 Could have spent another day hanging around Sonoma, but there’s no rest for the wicked – nor for the dedicated mammal-watcher – so we have made our way to the coast and to Point Reyes. On our way we did distract ourselves one more time by stopping at Korbel, one of the » » »



21 May 2016

Wine day

24 April 2016 Today was definitely wine day. No new mammals today, just us as drunk as skunks. Well, we visited five different wineries and tasted more than thirty different wines! Actually, it’s not as bad as it sounds. In California you pay for a wine tasting ($10 is usual for a small winery, but » » »



21 May 2016

Overtly ottery day

23 April 2016 Today we ended up in Sonoma. Wine country! It looked like it had snowed rather than rained higher up in Yosemite, and the big granite domes were all dusted with icing sugar when we drove away, very beautiful. Our route wound its way gradually down through forested mountains and then grassy hills, » » »



15 May 2016

Allen’s chipmunk chin-up day

22 April 2016 Well, we finally saw one chipmunk. Out at Hetch Hetchy, a much less visited part of Yosemite National Park in the far north where we had a lovely flower-filled hike alongside the reservoir in the sun. We were a little alarmed to find red newts (or maybe salamanders?) on the path wherever » » »



15 May 2016

Coyote cokey

21 April 2016 Ignore yesterday’s grumbles. Yosemite is undisputably one of the loveliest places on the entire planet. And we’ve visited a whole bunch of the planet’s most renowned treasures and wildernesses, so I’m pretty confident with my statement. If I wanted to try and tease out a reasoned explanation for why this is so, » » »



15 May 2016

Grey fox graduation day

20 April 2016 I do love to hate National Park Rangers. Although I need to be clear: I mean the cheerful and useless tourist-handlers at the information desks, not the dedicated conservation officers out in the field. Whether it’s Yellowstone, Yosemite, Banff or Flinders the conversation is always roughly the same… Me: “We’d like to » » »



14 May 2016

Desert cottontail day

19 April 2016 Our jetlag is perfect for wildlife watching. We woke up nice and fresh at 5am, which meant we could drive out at sunrise to look for wildlife on the Carrizo Plain. We found desert cottontails (rabbits, basically) and more ground squirrels near the (still closed) visitor centre but apart from that, nothing » » »



14 May 2016

Antelope squirrel amusement day

18 April 2016 I’m naming our days after the best new mammal we saw that day (unless we didn’t). So we’ll see how we go. Today we were visiting the Carrizo Plain, an essentially wild area of dry grassland and scrub in between two of California’s gigantic agricultural valleys. Bone dry mountains separate the Carrizo » » »



14 May 2016

LA arrival day

17 April 2016 It’s best not to be a slave to plans. We had expected the usual rigmarole on arrive in a U.S. airport, and so assumed that our 17:45 arrival time would translate into leaving the airport after 7pm, which would mean picking up our rental car and finally getting on the road at » » »