This past weekend my fiancée and I traveled south to Cayucos to join her family for a mini-vacation. As we traveled down the I-5 approaching Los Banos, we decided at the last minute to detour and take the scenic route along Highway 1. This added an additional 2 hours onto our drive, but it was so worth it.

The beauty of the California coast is truly a marvel and we took time to enjoy our surroundings. We stopped several times to take pictures and she even caught me doing a little photo shoot of my car! I’m no Alex, but I was certainly trying my best.


Moral of the story, just because a particular route is the quickest, it does not mean it is the most enjoyable or the right one to take. We arrived later than originally planned, I put more miles on my car, paid $5.40 for premium gas in Big Sur, yet neither of us had any regrets. It was the perfect beginning to an awesome weekend.

Language is not unique in nature, every animal has some kind of language. Even insects such as bees and ants know how to communicate, informing one another where there is food. Zoologist have discovered that green monkeys use various calls each with different meanings and identified that one call means “Careful! An eagle” while a slightly different call means “Careful! A Lion!”. When the researchers played a recording of the eagle warning call the monkeys stopped what they were doing and looked to the sky searching for the eagle. When the same group heard the lion warning call, they scrambled up a tree. Sperm Whales have the ability to produce more distinct sounds than green monkeys which has led to a diverse communication system. This system has even influenced the way clans are formed. Scientist have found that different sperm whale clans have their own distinct dialects, essentially whales that speak the same language stick together. There are even studies of ‘lost’ whales having to learn a new dialect to join the clan.