Leanne and I experienced our first Road's Scholar trip.  The trip was to Baja Mexico to learn about the desert and gray whales.  We also learned about culture, history and great food!

Day 1 January 17

The trip starts in San Diego, CA.  We met with the group at noon.  There will be 20 of us along with Artimeo our guide and Armando our bus driver.  Chris from the Scripps Aquarium talked to us about grey whales.
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Some stats: There are around 25K whales in the wild.  The lagoons we will be visiting is the farthest south they travel.  Here they have their babies and mate.  They give birth every 2 years.  In the summer in the arctic they will feed putting on 30 to 40% more weight.  They migrate slowly about 4 miles an hour.  The lagoons will have well over 1000 whales.

Grey whales were hunted to extinction in the Atlantic but they may be starting to migrate in the Atlantic.  They can grow to 40 ft in length.  They were hunted to near extinction twice in the Pacific. The Mexican government has made these lagoons a sanctuary.  Our guide as well as Chris tell us this is really an amazing experience.  Grey whales are pretty gentle but apparently they gained a reputation of being fighters when they were hunted. As long as we do not harpoon them we should be safe.

Then we headed to the Scripps Aquarium.  It was not as big as the Shedd.There was a great section on sea horses and sea dragons and a few tanks of jelly fish. 

From there we drove over to La Jolla Cove.  The cormorants , gulls and pelicans were numerous.  And we saw seals.  I did not walk to seal beach because I wanted to see the sunset. I did get a couple of shots of seals though. 

 Supper was at Buco de beppo.  We had two kinds of salad, 3 entrees, bread and cheesecake for dessert. I don’t think we will starve! Scroll down to the slideshows