So. Cal. Part 3 - San Simeon / Cambria [231011-14]

We left Morro Bay on Wednesday and drove about 25 miles north to San Simeon.

Our first stop was at Moonstone Beach, where we walked the boardwalk that ran along the beach for a mile until we found a rocky spot that looked like it’d be good for tide pooling.  We almost didn’t notice at first that along with a ton of seagulls on one set of rocks was a number of harbor seals that had come onto land to lay in the sun.

One of the seals kept a wary eye on us as we moseyed on past to a different set of rocks a little farther on.

Tide pooling wasn’t overly exciting: mostly the same plethora of hermit crabs and green anemone that we had seen at Morro Bay.  Eventually nearer to the water I found this cute little sand crab (about the size of my palm) hiding out under a rock:

We walked back along the beach looking for moonstones; we’re still not 100% sure whether we found any (but we think we did).  The wind was really blowing hard on the beach, so at one point we took a break in one of the makeshift driftwood shelters that past folks had constructed on the beach.

Thursday we drove up to the Elephant Seal Rookery at Point Piedras, which did not disappoint!  The raised boardwalk went along multiple beaches that were filled with hundreds of elephant seals.

This time of year is the “fall haul-out”, so they’re all juveniles and females on the beach right now.  The males won’t start arriving until late November.

We also thought that we might visit the Piedras Blancas Light Station, but it turns out that the grounds are closed to the public except by guided tour (and then only on certain days).  Here’s a picture of the Station from afar (we could’ve taken one from the gate, but it’s actually kind of run down and ugly up close; we found out later that it was abandoned by the Coast Guard years ago).

If it looks like it’s missing its top, that’s because it is.  More on that below.

In the afternoon we went looking for zebras.  Yes, zebras.  Apparently Hearst had imported a bunch for his castle estate way back when, and the herds still roam the estate grounds.  We walked the road leading to the Hearst Castle Visitor Center looking for them, but it wasn’t until we reached the Visitor Center that we actually found some; the herd was hanging out behind it.

All in all, we counted 38 zebras (of various sizes).

Since we were there already, we looked through the displays in the Visitor Center and walked through the Museum.  We noted that although the museum displays covered much of the Hearst family history from the last century, no mention was made whatsoever of Patty.  Here’s a photo of the Castle taken from the Visitor Center (which is located a fair distance away!), which is as close as we got; there was no way we were going to pay the exorbitant tour prices to go up there (you could spend a day in Disneyland for that kind of money, and have a way better time!)

The other interesting random thing was that some visitors had driven their Olde Tyme cars in (we had seen some on the highway earlier in the day):

We spent Thursday in Cambria.  In October they have their annual Scarecrow Festival, so we wandered the town browsing the shops and checking out the many and varied “scarecrows”.  They varied greatly in design, with only a few being of the traditional burlap and straw stuffed variety, like “Kevin Beacon” (a lot of them had punny little names like that) who was stationed by the Fresnel lens that used to be in the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse:

Others were more mannequin-like and/or based on famous people, like Dolly Parton;

And others were just out of this world;

And then there was "Romance Novel Rob":

Every year there’s a featured theme display, and this year’s was (Netflix’s) “Wednesday”:

Evidently the scarecrows don’t really work, though, because we found all these crows hanging out on one of the bridges:

For lunch, we stopped by the Hidden Kitchen to sample their local specialty of “blue corn waffles”.  They come sweet or savory, and being lunchtime we opted for one of the savory options:  the San Luis Sunrise - topped with two free range eggs, avocado, Hidden Kitchen Sauce, and normally Niman Ranch bacon ends (which we had on the side):

It was quite yummy, with the waffle being slightly sweet on its own (and the bacon being overly plentiful and completely unnecessary 😉).

In the evening, we tried tide pooling again on the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve - finding some sea urchins and mussels in addition to the usual hermit crabs and anemones this time.  They also had some neat driftwood-adorned benches to rest on:

The next morning was the annular eclipse.  We had failed to get eclipse glasses before our trip, so Christine jury rigged a pinhole viewer from two sheets of paper.

Then it was time to head home.  All in all it was a great trip!  The only downside was that on our way home we confirmed that our Volta system had a (previously reported on the TOWB group) firmware bug that prevented it from charging properly when the engine stayed above 2000 RPM (a condition masked on our previous trips which involved mountain and hill driving were we didn't sustain > 2000 RPM for long periods of time); the "fix" shouldn't be too difficult, though.