It's likely you won't be thinking the same thing as Herman Melville's anti-hero when you spot a gray whale off California's coast. The whales migrate along the coast twice every year, heading south to give birth to their babies in the warm lagoons of Baja California every winter and returning north in the spring.

Mary Jane Schramm, public information manager of The Oceanic Society and co-author of "West Coast Whale Watching," says Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco is one of the best places to watch the migration:

"It's a peninsula that juts about 25 miles (40 kilometers) out directly into the gray whales' migration path. In the second or third week of January, you can see just an incredible number of whales for land-based whale-watching. The northbound migration is a little bit more straggled. The females have just given birth and the young calves can't swim as fast. They have to pause a lot more frequently to rest and to nurse."

Excellent whale viewing also can be had at Point Loma, near San Diego, she says, but Schramm really recommends stepping off the shore onto an Oceanic Society boat expedition into San Ignacio lagoon in Baja California, one of three lagoons where the gray whales give birth.

"You can literally touch whales at arm distance," she says, adding that they sometimes rub against the boat. "It's very extraordinary behavior that you don't see very often ... anywhere else in the world. "