Sitting in a noisy McDonald's in Salinas, CA, because my cheap motel charges 4 bucks for wi-fi!!
Anyway, I am a total failure as a blogger, largely because I have actually turned out to be a smashing success as a traveller!  Just can't do both!  Today was one of the most spectacular treats I've ever experienced (and I've even eaten Breyer's ice cream!). The 80 miles or so drive up CA Rte. 1 between San Simeon and Carmel, known as Big Sur, was unbelievable.  High cliffs meeting the ocean with huge rocks jutting up....you've seen the pictures, but this was really real.  Megacove after megacove...uncountable, one more magnificent than the other, each one almost a mile wide arc of cliffs  dropping down to the pounding ocean, studded with amazing rocky prominences.  Sheer beauty, I thought, and then realized the pun!  Almost as amazing as the natural land/seascape is the incredible engineering and labor that produced the highway that climbs and curves and switchbacks its way alongside those cliffs, so the awestruck traveller is at the right height to look down hundreds of feet to the ocean and up another hundreds to the tops of the steep mountainside which he is actually travelling upon!  Yet the road is usually very wide and smooth and feels remarkably safe. 
Anyway, I did take lots of photos and some videos, of course, and will post them when I can.  And yes, they include elephant seals frolicking in a most accommodating and picturesque tidal cove.  They seem to enjoy being in California, too.

And I even took a detour to avoid going all the way up the coast to Monterey, since I was suffering from sensory overload, and the sun was in my face when I looked at the ocean that late in the day.  I hung a right inland to Salinas, a working class burg where English is spoken as a second language and John Steinbeck has a National Center.

Tomorrow I go back and explore Monterey (the 17 mile drive, etc.) and then up to Santa Cruz.
Till then.....be well and keep in touch.