Today was the last day of our family trip to celebrate my dad's birthday. We drove down to Monterey pretty early this morning from my Aunt's place in Burlingame, and spent the day in the aquarium and on the "beaches". The highlight of the day was standing in the midst of thousands of various birds.

I have never seen so many birds in one place in my life. There might have been more than a million birds there, but my photographs only provide a glimpse into what we saw. There were birds in the air, on the rocks, and in the bay. It felt like we were standing in a hurricane of birds.

There were lots of dead fish on the shore, so that might have been part of the reason there were so many birds...

The aquarium was pretty interesting, and it was fun looking at, and taking pictures of, the various kinds of underwater life.

Looking again at the pictures I took of the bird scene, I'm slightly disappointed at how poorly it shows just how many birds there were. Looking up, the sky looked like it was completely filled with birds, but the photographs don't show the farther-away ones, and the gaps in the sky make it look like there aren't that many. Oh well. You'll have to take my word for it.

On the way home in the evening we stopped and ate at Fresh Choice.

It's the end of another year. In previous years, I've posted a recap entry of the year on new years eve, but since continuing that tradition would have prevented me from posting photos of monterey, I've decided to change history instead... I've gone back and changed the entries on previous new years eves to show the photos I actually took on that day rather than a recap of the year. Sorry to everyone who would rather see the recap. I'm big on uniformity.

This year, I took about 15,000 photographs, more than last year but less than my huge output years. Praise God for this past year, and cya in the next!