California’s Central Coast neatly divides Northern and Southern California, culturally as well as geographically.
One site that was recommended by brother Mike (who knows the area well because son Matt graduated from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo) is the Elephant Seal Rookery , several miles above San Simeon on California Highway One. The Elephant Seals used to use this desolate stretch of coast for centuries for their land-based activities, then simply stopped coming.
In 1990, the seals returned, and now thousands of them call it home during the mating, molting, and birthing seasons, for 2-4 months a year. Here is son two’s take on our visit:
The elephant seal beach was really cool. There were a lot of them, like thousands. All of them were molting, which means their skin was peeling and the seals were fighting, which was really cool. The reason they were fighting was for breeding rights. The alpha male battles other males to see who will be the alpha male and there are other battles between the beta males.
Okay, not a lot of fighting in the photo, because they also don’t eat while they are out of the ocean shedding. But the fights we saw were cool. The seals migrate as much as 3,000 miles a year, and dive thousands of feet to feed. While we have covered a lot of miles, this is really our once-in-a-lifetime. The seals do it every year! We also have not had to deal with orcas trying to make us a meal!
We also visited Moonstone Beach, in a gusting, cold wind, to lay on the warm rocks and pick over the mountains of smooth, tiny pebbles that form the beach of this quiet enclave.
With its rolling hills and industrious farms, the Central Coast is a place we’d love to return to. A unique, and very Mediterranean feel!
