A Tale of a Trail Where You Might See a Whale

Point Vicente on Palos Verdes

Last weekend Stacy and I celebrated our 11th anniversary by taking a one-nighter down at a highbrow inn in Dana Point. It was a great 24 kid-free hours. (Thanks, Grandma Lynne!) Our room had an ocean view and as we were sitting out on the patio after breakfast on Saturday morning we were able to see a few whales spouting way off in the distance. They were pretty far out and you couldn't spot them easily; the best thing to do was to look for the whale watching boats scattered about and when they all fired up their engines and raced to a common spot, you could train your binoculars and see a spout or two. It has been a very good season, supposedly, as the whales make their way back up the California coast to their summer quarters off Alaska.

On Sunday we were back in the real world and fully parental again. Inspired by our sightings in Orange County, and knowing the kids would get a kick out of it, we decided to pack up a picnic lunch and head to our local lookout after church. The Palos Verdes penninsula is a much-touted whale watching area, mainly because just opposite of where the peninsula juts out into the ocean, Catalina Island stretches long and large and forms a natural whale funnel, forcing the migrating monstrosities to bunch up and shoot through the narrow channel like cars on the 405 during a SIG alert.

We got to Point Vicente, the primo spot for water-watching, found a table and had our eclectic lunch - a hodge podge of things pulled from the fridge on our run out the door that morning. It was a beautiful day and Catalina was reclining lazily across the channel like it too realized it was Sunday and need not make any special exertions.

After we had our lunch the kids played on the rocks and fences and tormented their mother with stories about all the rattlesnakes they knew were lurking about (as all the signs insisted). Then we got out the binoculars and began our survey of the sea. We were chagrined. Sunny and beautiful, the waters frothed and churned, but were apparently devoid of life, at least of the aquatic mammalian kind. After fifteen or twenty minutes of fruitless searching we grew restless and decided to save our straining eyesight and take a stroll on the walking path that lines the cliffs. As we progressed, we were actually treated with more natural wildlife, but not the kinds were were really hoping for.

N demonstrating how to surf around rattlesnake infested areas.

Thar she goes!!!  Oh, nevermind.  It's just a rabbit.

Mommy's binoculars were the source of much grief and petty bickering. It might have been a little self-serving, but I quickly laid down the law the if anyone squabbled, Daddy got the binoculars for 5 minutes.

N enjoying his pristine view of the fence railing.

Look over there!!!  Oh, nevermind.  Just pelicans.

As we were making the reverse leg of our excursion we had just about returned to the look-out area when there was a commotion among all the other would-be whale watchers draping the fences. Everyone was chittering and murmuring and pointing. There, just beyond the lighthouse point, was a frothing band of water. It was foaming and spitting and slowly moving northwest around the point. It looked as though the bottom of the ocean floor was slowly rending apart sending spurts of boiling volcanic steam up as the split rent the length of the channel. A closer view with the binoculars, however, revealed something much more biological than geological: an enormous pod of dolphins or porpoises was making its way up the coast in a mad frenzy, arching and jumping and leaping and twirling. It was an unbelievable sight - the line kept growing as more and more dolphins rounded the point. There could have been 200-300 hundred of them, maybe as many as 500 - who could count the heaving, foaming mass? They would clump up then spread out then regroup again. They were making incredible time as they raced past us and off toward Malibu and points north.

We watched them until they were a shimmering splash of spray far out and away and then slowly gathered ourselves for the walk to the car. We were not another fifteen feet further along when another of those now familiar gasps of excitement sloshed from the sightseers along the fences. "A spout!" someone cried.  Back to the fence we raced and got to watch a retrograde whale making his way against the flow of traffic, down the coast heading southward. I expect he'd found something tasty as he headed north and had swung around for another helping. He would spout and crest one or two times, then disappear for a few minutes only to throw off another spout a quarter mile south of where we last lost him.

He was right up front and fairly close to the shoreline, which surprised me somewhat. (I looked it up later and found that the sea bottom plunges down very quickly just off the cliffs, and he didn't have to be far afield to be in very deep water.) We watched him make his meandering way south, looking very leisurely compared to the mob rush we'd just seen from his cousins. Soon he was lost to our eagle eyes. We turned yet again toward our car and this time let no cries of joy divert us from our journey home.

Not exactly a National Geographic shot, but the best I could do.