Morro Bay: March 2017

(Remember that you can click on the photos to see a slideshow, and then hit "escape" to get back to the text. Also, a note on the photo credits: as always, both Felice and I took these shots, and many of my shots resulted from her suggestions.  I do the photo editing using Lightroom; my goal is to reproduce just what we saw, as faithfully as possible.)

In early March, we took a very brief trip to Morro Bay.  Unfortunately, I had the flu the entire time, so our activities were pretty limited.  We arrived at Montana de Oro State Park on the afternoon of March 8 and took a pleasant bike ride along the cliffs at sunset:

March 9:  We hiked at Point Buchon, just south of the state park, which is private property maintained by Pacific Gas & Electric.  There are only a limited number of slots available for hikers, and entrance is by reservation only:

One of the sea caves had collapsed to create a sinkhole, revealing a striking "angular unconformity," in which old strata were first tilted up, then cut off flat by wave erosion, and then capped with new horizontal strata -- the contact zone runs from the lower left to the center of the shot:

There were tunnels through the offshore remnants of the coastal cliffs:

March 10:  In the morning, we rode our bikes along the cliffs of Montana de Oro.  The wildflowers were just starting to bloom:

On a muddy shelf near the water, we found (I think) coyote tracks:

At midday, we moved our campsite north to Morro Strand State Beach.  Even though this campground was just a parking lot next to the beach, the views of Morro Rock and the ocean were great, even from inside the trailer:

March 11:  In the morning, we we drove north along the coast to Ragged Point, where the coast highway was closed by a rockslide.  The drive was exquisite; after all the rain (almost 100 inches in some parts of Big Sur!), the hills were a brilliant emerald green.  On the way south, we stopped off at Piedras Blancas to watch the elephant seals.  From the cliff, we could see them swimming in the surf:

The huge males were posing on the sand, bellowing at their rivals:

We saw a brief fight between two males:

After the fight, the victorious male settled down for a nap.  The female slithered away, inchworming across the sand toward (I think) her pup:

This is a close-up of the male, asleep -- his skin is scarred after hundreds of fights:

As they doze on the beach, they throw sand over themselves, perhaps to drive away the flies or to protect themselves from the sun:

The sunset that evening was astonishing – Felice took this with her iPhone: