Ok, ok, I waited long enough. Someone asked me today if I had updated the blog lately so I guess I waited too long. I didn't have enough to do and enough going on lately (yeah, right) so I decided to join my elk hunting buddy Mike and head down to the Monterey area for some scuba diving over the weekend. We had originally planned to go with a group to the Mendocino area and do some fish and crab hunting, but when the group backed out we decided to go on our own. We drove down on Wednesday night and stayed with my old dive buddy Dave in Cupertino after stopping for a quick 9-holes of golf at the course my Dad works at in Fairfield.

We headed down to Point Lobos to one of my all-time favorite dive spots, but it was undivable due to green algae bloom and poor surf conditions. Instead we headed back up to Lover's Point in Monterey where the conditions were a bit better. Visibility was still what I would consider poor at about 10-15 feet. Mike put things into perspective though when he said "hey, it's still 5x better than what we had in Quinn's Pond two weeks ago! We were able to get Mike to do his first cold-water ocean dive and his first surf entry too, so that was worth doing.

Saturday was the hightlight of the trip when we took the Monterey Express boat out and dove just outside of Pebble Beach, Carmel. It was a bit surgy but visibility was at least up to the 20 foot range. We saw the usual fish and invertebrate sea-life and it was fun to see a new diver experience the giant-kelp forest of the Monterey bay. We did two dives from the boat before driving back, cleaning up our gear, loading up the car and heading back home to Idaho. We made a slight 'detour' when we missed Hwy 80 and took Hwy 50 to Placerville and 49 back up. It was out of the way and would have been quicker just to trurn around, but then we never would have gotten to see the California law-abiding deer that was standing at the cross-walk waiting for us to go by before crossing the road! If only our suicidal Idaho deer were as considerate!