San Simeon Day 3

The third day of the road trip was also set aside for exploring.  Some of you have probably been to San Simeon to visit "Hearst Castle."  Hearst Castle is the primary tourist attraction on the central California coast, but this trip was about relaxing and messing around, not about going to tourist attractions.  After breakfast we left Morro Bay and drove about 40 miles north to the Piedras Blancas light house area.  (Don't get me wrong, Hearst Castle is an amazing place, but not this trip.)

California has 840 miles of coastline. Most of it is beautiful. This spot is no exception. If you enlarge this photo you will see a young male Elephant Seal (towards the lower right hand corner).  He's just this minute coming ashore after a 3,000 mile migration from the Aleutian Islands to this very spot.

If you noticed that the water is sort of rusty red around this guy, it's because he has just totally cleaned out his bowels and bladder before going ashore. They don't like rolling around in their own muck on shore, so they go "shi shi" and "unko" in the water.  Oh sorry, that's pee pee and poo poo in Japanese slang.

Nothing but nature at it's finest going on in this shot.

A few hundred yards south of the pic of the young male Elephant Seal, is a bunch of other seals (mostly females) who  have recently arrived. They come and go at all times and don't travel in groups during their long journey.  We're looking at only about 10% of the beach. During January and February the entire beach is covered with seals. Earlier I said they wouldn't muck up their rookery, you can see here how clean it is.

We decided to take advantage of the beach and catch a few rays. That's me in the middle looking around for the concession stand.   I passed, as all they had was herring on a stick...

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