4. San Simeon: Elephant Seals

Recorded off the CA 1 Highway at the San Simeon Elephant Seal Vista Point. Headed to San Francisco from Los Angeles, my girlfriend and I turn off the  highway into a parking lot overlooking the ocean. We join the small crowd gathered along the guardrails and look out onto the shore where  the massive elephant seals lie on the sand. Their odd, oversized noses  droop down over their top lips and into their mouths. Every now and  then, they crane their heads up to the sky and emit vocalizations that  sound like water emptying from a drain. Their appearance is extremely  inelegant, though with the lulling repetition of the ocean waves as a  backdrop, their guttural groans add an otherworldliness to a meditative sonic landscape.