The Traveling Widower

Category: hiking

  • Exploring Ano Nuevo: A Elephant Seal Adventure on the California Coast

    January 13th/14th, 2026

    View from Capitola cliffs
    View from Capitola

    After a full month of boredom at home, I really needed to get out of Dodge for a while. I had considered going to Yosemite, but decided to head to the coast to see the Elephant Seals at Ano Nuevo State Park. It was snowing quite a bit in the mountains, and I just did not feel like dealing with a long drive in winter conditions. I have chains for the Subaru, but really don’t want to use them. Wimp.

    I had visited Ano Nuevo many years ago, when we lived in the South Bay – I remembered the long walk to the beach, and wandering around the huge seals which were sprawled around the trails. I did recall that it was a complete waste of time in terms of photography, but that it was amazing seeing the huge seals up close. So, I went ahead and booked two guided walks, and try to figure out a better way to photograph these weird beasts. And while I’m in the neighborhood, visit some friends I have not seen in a while. 

    It was a relatively short, 30 mile drive from the hotel I stay at in Scotts Valley to the park, along an incredibly beautiful stretch of US 1 Highway. But then again, almost all of US 1 is beautiful. 

    The park is open all year long, but access to the beach is restricted during the pup/mating and molting seasons, when there are just too many seals on the beach to allow visitors to wander around unattended. The males are enormous – about the size of a mid-sized SUV. You just don’t want to have tourists flattened by one of these behemoths. So you have to reserve a guided, docent tour to get down to see the seals. 

    The guided tour is about 2.5 hours, and requires 6 miles round trip of walking, mostly on graded trails. It’s a pleasant walk down to the shelter where the tour starts. 

    Trail leading to the beach at Ano Nuevo State Park
    Ano Nuevo State Park HQ buildin

    And sometimes if you are lucky, you might see some other creature other than seals.

    Black Tail Deer having breakfast

    The docents take you the last 2 miles along the beach trails, which get you up close and personal with the seals. It’s pretty amazing. There are hundreds of male, female and newborns pups scattered around the beach, with some of the huge alpha males hauled up on the trails. It’s quite noisy with the big males trumpeting, and the pups all shrieking to be fed. From a photography viewpoint, it’s pure chaos. The seals are pretty much sand colored, except for the black pups, and they cover themselves with sand to maintain their temperature when the sun is shining. So most of what you see are masses of large, tubular, sand colored bodies lying on sand, and throwing sand on themselves.

    Once in a while, the weird males prop themselves up and start trumpeting, and then flop back onto the sand. If you are really lucky, you get to see the big males fighting – sort of looks like dun colored sumo wrestlers, bashing against each other. 

    If you are more than just a casual photographer, this mess of seals and sand is a real challenge, and if it’s a beautiful sunny day, the lighting will be awful. As it was the first day. Even in the morning, the glare from the ocean is intense.

    The seals pretty much do nothing most of the time – the pups move around a bit, and the adults throw sand up every now and then. Not exactly photogenic or very exciting. I did learn my lesson from my last experience to:

    1 – Use a tripod/monopod

    2 – Look for interactions between the females and juvenile males – they are all more active then the huge alpha males. The females get into arguments over the pups, which make for interesting action shots. 

    3 – Focus on the pups – the newborns are tiny, and scattered all over the place. Most of them are sheltered next to their mothers, so you can get interactions between them.

    4 – Head shots of the males are interesting if you can get their eyes open. On the other hand, blob shots are not interesting. 

    And my plan to experiment on day one, and make some approach changes on day two worked out well. Granted, the seals were more active on Wednesday, but I also changed some camera settings, and set up the monopod before we got to the viewing points on the trail. I have spent some time curating some of the images with Adobe Lightroom, mostly just cropping and changing exposure setting. Here are some of the results (double-click on an image to expand it):

    Alpha male elephant seal with a female peeking over him
    Very young elephant seal pup
    Alpha male elephant seal, throwing sand on its back
    Two female elephant seals arguing about something.

    And a few more…

    After the tour on Tuesday, I decided to visit Capitola, hoping to get a few shots on the beach, but more importantly, visit the ice cream shop (Polar Bear Ice Cream) in the village. I was pretty tired from the hike, but I always enjoy wandering along the beach there. But…tragedy. The ice cream shop was closed! They only open on weekends in the winter. I was really bummed. I wound up heading back up to the car, and stopped at a Diary Queen instead. A Blizzard was not really what I wanted, but it tasted pretty good. And I did get to climb some stairs once again. It has become an obsession.

    Steep stairs at Capitola Village

    The second day I was more successful with my post-hike extensions. I stopped at the wonderful gelato shop in Los Gatos. A successful and tasty end to this little adventure.

    Great gelato at Dolce Spazio Gelato, in Los Gatos.

    Cappacino chip and vanilla bean from Dolce Spazio Gelato. A million calories and worth every one.

    This turned out to be a pleasant, short trip – perfect weather, two nice hikes on the beach, and met with friends I have not seen in a while.

    And if you ever wander through the Westfield Valley Fair shopping center in San Jose (went to a restaurant there), you might walk by one of the strangest store displays I’ve ever seen.

    There is more strange stuff inside, including a robot which was dozing when I wandered through. Apparently, she does get quite animated.

    If you are wondering what this place sells….upscale eye glass frames. Sorry, I’ll stick to Warby Parker.

  • Shackleton Redux

    November 23rd, 2025

    After our visit to Adelie penguins colony, we did in fact find a location with shore-fast ice – that’s sea ice that is still firmly attached to land. The plan was to drive the resolution deep enough into the ice, so that it would be send everyone out to ski or walk around for a while. It sounds dumb, but it was a lot of fun, and how often do you get a chance to walk on water.  Sea ice is frozen sea water, not glacial ice like the big ice shelf’s you read about. (We learned a lot about different icebergs on this trip).

    This is sea ice, but obviously not stable.

    A serene landscape depicting icy waters with various floating icebergs and snow-covered mountain peaks under a cloudy sky.

    So, off we went in search of a suitable site to play – the crew had found a fjord which appeared to still have what we were looking for, on recent satellite images, and sure enough the ice was still there. It was fun hanging out on the bow overlook as the ship very slowly plowed through the ice until it was fairly deep, and sort of embedded. They dropped a stairway down, and sent a crew out to test the ice, and mark out an area that was safe to play and ski on.

    You can see the stairs lowered to the ice, and a couple of crew members off in the distance, marking the safe area. And a couple of lazy seals as well.

    Aerial view of broken ice sheets on dark water, with large sections of ice floating and jagged edges visible.
    Aerial view of a ship's deck overlooking a frozen landscape, featuring a small dock with an orange buoy and ice formations.
    Two people standing on a vast expanse of snow, with visible cracks and small rocks in the foreground.

    Once all was safe and set to go, they let two groups go off for a cross-country ski excursion. I had wanted to do this – I used to do back-country skiing all the time in Colorado, and was pretty good a telemarking down mountain passes. But they would only let passengers with recent experience (last year or two) go, and it has been a good ten years for me). I did start to argue the point, but then I heard Jan’s voice in my head ….”you idiot, you have a bad knee that’s hurting…..be safe!!!”. So I went for option 2, which was to take a long stroll out on the ice.  Which turned out to be fun.

    They had marked out a one mile or so track, which circled around the bay and passed by the two seals which ignored everyone. It was funny looking back at the ship and seeing this long ine of orange coats – it looked like we had abandoned ship, which was surrounded by ice. It made me think of the famous Shackleton Endurance voyage saga, hence the title of this post.

    A group of tourists in orange jackets walking on snowy terrain with a large ship in the background and icy mountains.
    A vast snowy landscape with mountains in the background and a cloudy sky, featuring a few small groups of people in the distance.
    Two individuals in orange jackets stand on a vast, snowy landscape surrounded by mountains, with a cloudy sky overhead.
    A polar expedition cruise ship, the National Geographic Resolution, anchored on a snowy landscape with ice formations in the background. Tourists in bright orange jackets explore the area.
    Two seals resting on a snowy landscape with mountains in the background.
    A panoramic view of a snowy landscape with a large cruise ship anchored in the distance. Several individuals in bright orange jackets are walking on the ice towards the ship, with snow-covered mountains in the background under a cloudy sky.

    It was not too cold, but still had to bundle up with all our expedition gear including the Muck boots and the hated life vest. We were walking on water after all – there was always the danger of stepping on a weak spot or a seal air hole.

    A person wearing sunglasses and an orange life jacket poses in front of a snowy mountainous landscape.

    And they did set up the photo-op of pulling the ship out of the ice. It is a rite of passage for cruising Antarctica

    A man in an orange jacket stands on snowy terrain, holding a rope connected to the National Geographic Resolution ship in the background.

    Other than the seals, and a couple of wayward penguins, this was just a fun outing. It is always great to get off the ship and walk around, and it was even better when you can simply walk off the ship onto a flat, stable surface. No waves, rocks or icy climbs. And the views across the open expanse of ice to the surrounding icy mountains was incredible. It is just so hard to fully describe what this place is like. It’s breathtaking where ever you go.

    As for the wayward penguins, I noticed after I boarded back on the ship, and was watching below from the lounge, that three penguin had magically appeared. I guess they followed the channel created by the ship, and decided to check things out. It was fun watching them – they just scoot forward on their stomachs, keeping their wings out as stabilizers, and push forward with their feet. They look like little black and white snow mobiles, and scoot forward quickly. When they hit a crack in the ice, they stopped, stared at it for a while, then each one hopped forward. When all three were on the other side, off they went again, heading back to open water. I wish I had photographed it all – it was like watching the three stooges.