BeLight at a Road Trip

Monterey

The first stop on our five-day journey was Monterey, where we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is located on the site of a former sardine cannery on Cannery Row in Monterey, California, is one of the largest aquariums in the world. It has an annual attendance of 1.8 million and holds 35,000 plants and animals representing 623 species.

The Sealife exhibit includes stingrays, jellyfish, sea otters, sharks and numerous other native marine species, which can be viewed above and below the waterline. For displaying jellyfish, the Monterey Bay Aquarium uses an aquarium called a Kreisel tank which creates a circular flow to support and suspend the jellies. Visitors are able to observe the creatures of the kelp forest on the several levels in the building.

Big Sur

Heading South from Monterey, we started our trip along Big Sur. Big Sur is a sparsely populated region of the central California coast where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. The terrain offers stunning views, making Big Sur a popular tourist destination. Although Big Sur has no specific boundaries, many sources define the area as including the 90 miles of coastline between the Carmel River and San Carpoforo Creek extending about 20 miles inland to the eastern foothills of the Santa Lucia Mountains.

The ocean and the coast line are very picturesque, with bright colors, and it is very warm and sunny there even in winter. We enjoyed the rocky cliffs, the ocean waves, saw a lot of elephant seals out of the water raising their cubs. The McWay Falls located at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park is one of only two in the region that are close enough to the ocean to be referred as "tidefalls". Some of us even took a dip in the Pacific.

Los Angeles

Sure, nobody can leave Los Angeles without taking a picture of the Hollywood sign, visiting the Walk of Fame and at least one of the beautiful ocean beaches. That's exactly what we did there. We were lucky to see the famous actress Glenn Close receive a personalized star on Hollywood Walk of Fame.

San Diego

San Diego is one of the most popular tourist destinations. San Diego is a fast growing metropolis. Once dubbed “a Navy town”, San Diego is now one of the largest American cities and home of diverse industries. Naval Base San Diego is the largest base of the United States Navy on the West coast of the United States. Naval Base San Diego is the principal homeport of the Pacific Fleet, consisting of 50 ships and an additional 50 tenant commands.

We started off our tour of San Diego at the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum, which was the longest-serving U.S. Navy aircraft carrier of the 20th century - a 47 year odyssey that spanned the end of WWII and the liberation of Kuwait in 1991.

Then we spent the whole day in Balboa Park, home to 15 major museums, renowned performing arts venues, beautiful gardens and the San Diego Zoo. We visited the San Diego Model Railroad Museum, Air & Space Museum, Automotive Museum, Museum of Photography, Japanese Garden, Museum of Man and the Zoo.

Joshua Tree National Park

Joshua Tree National Park is one of the most unusual places we have seen. Two deserts, two large ecosystems primarily determined by elevation, come together in the park: the Colorado Desert (part of the Sonoran Desert) - below 3,000 feet (910 m), occupying the eastern half of the park; and the higher, slightly cooler, and wetter Mojave Desert, which is the special habitat of the undisciplined Joshua trees, which grow throughout the western half of the park. According to legend, Mormon pioneers considered the limbs of the Joshua trees to resemble the upstretched arms of Joshua leading them to the promised land.

In the evening, tired of rocks and Joshua trees, we headed to San Francisco to start our way home.