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For as long as I can remember, I've thought of Morro Bay as a place to escape from Los Angeles. At the age of 10, I visited former neighbors who had moved here after selling their house in suburban Los Angeles to pursue a slower, simpler life. I cherish the boyhood memory of careening around the streets in this seaside town on a bicycle, awestruck by how empty they were of cars.

So when my girlfriend, Nancy, suggested we drive up to Morro Bay to get away from it all, I pounced on the idea — even if it meant a couple of days of pursuing her passion: bird-watching.

Morro Bay is a major winter refuge for non-L.A. escapees. It teems with migrants this time of year. Noisy flocks of black brant geese fly down from summer breeding grounds in the Arctic. Enormous white pelicans with yellow bills come from the prairies of Canada. American avocets, formal in their black and white winter plumage, and handsome pintail ducks arrive en masse from inland lakes now locked in ice.

I quickly learned that Morro Bay is one of the hottest birding spots in the Western United States, with more than 250 species of birds seen between November and February.

Birders flock here for the annual Morro Bay Winter Bird Festival, Friday to Jan. 17 this year, which enables birders to strut their species-spotting skills, among other activities. It's a my-list-is-bigger-than-your-list sort of competition.

Fortunately, we came a few weeks earlier. The place was packed with birds but not the birders. The streets remained as quiet as I remembered them.

Our getaway began in earnest as we exited U.S. 101 about 200 miles from L.A. and headed north on Highway 1 toward Morro Bay. The city of San Luis Obispo quickly gave way to green hills, and a string of ancient volcanoes called the Nine Sisters marked the route like giant stepping stones. The last of the sisters is Morro Rock. At 576 feet, it lords over the town and the bay from its place in the surf zone.

(Morro Rock is challenged at the edge of the harbor by three smokestacks from a poorly placed power plant, which may have inadvertently protected this place from becoming another coastal boomtown.)

We hustled to the waterfront embarcadero to rent a two-person kayak as a squall was gathering. I had a new pair of 10-power binoculars that Nancy had given me as part of her plot to get me hooked on birding. Now, she was telling me, one of the best ways to spot the birds in Morro Bay's expansive estuary was to get on the water and sneak up on them.

First, we had to fight our way upwind and against the tide to get deep into the 2,300 acres of protected bird sanctuary. Once there, we were able to glide close to a seething mass of western sandpipers on an exposed sandbar. They were in a feeding frenzy, stitching the mud like erratic sewing machines with their needle-like beaks.

Easily spooked into flight, these small shorebirds would rise aloft like clouds of tossed confetti before settling softly back to Earth. Even I, the most reluctant of birders, was fascinated by this aerial ballet. It was almost as interesting as the herd of 75 harbor seals, lounging on another sandbar like giant slugs with wide eyes and whiskers.

Chilled from the outing, we retreated to our room at the Inn of Morro Bay just as the skies unleashed the first torrent of rain that persisted through our stay.

The inn is on the bay at the entrance to Morro Bay State Park. We had reserved a standard room, which, after a AAA discount, cost about $89 a night, plus tax. It was a clean but unremarkable accommodation in the middle of the complex of clapboard buildings with red-brick driveways.

We asked for an upgrade the second night to a room that overlooked the water and had a gas fireplace and hot tub. We were glad we did.

The weather wasn't cooperating. More kayaking was out. Every time we ventured out of the vehicle to get closer to the shorebirds and waterfowl, sheets of wind-driven rain quickly chilled us right through our rain gear.