California coast trip, Day 5: unexpected rewards in Morro Bay, cranky elephant seals farther north

Sometimes the key to a great travel day is something you did the day before — making a reservation, say, or getting a tip from a local. In my case, the key to a great Day 5 was what I failed to do on Day 4.

If I’d bothered to check the weather for Morro Bay, I’d have seen an overnight low in the high 30s — and that alone might have banished the thought of a little hike at dawn. But I didn’t see the weather report, and I did get up early and hustled up to the top of Black Hill (661 feet above sea level and very close to my hotel).

The reward didn’t come easily. I got to the top all right, but the sun and clouds played peekaboo for a good half-hour before spilling light over the rippling green hills, the long spit of seaside dunes, the coastal mountains to the north (Santa Lucia?), and finally Morro Rock itself, which rises 578 feet from the sea. That was a nice moment, which I savored with my hat on snug and fingers stuffed into my pockets.

And about the sea. If I’d read that weather report, it would have prepared me for an afternoon high of about 58, with light rain. That’s not the sort of news that prompts most people to say, “Hey, let’s go sit in kayaks and let the wind come screaming at us across the frigid water!” But since I didn’t have the news, I found the one kayak rental place in town that was open on a Monday in recession-ridden January — Sub Sea Tours — and they gave me a bright-yellow sit-on-top to paddle around between the dunes and the marina. They also gave me a father-son juggling exhibition, right there on the dock. Serious juggling, with six of those bowling-pin things flying back and forth between Kevin Winfield, 51, and Mario Battaglia-Winfield, 20. The best things on the road are the wholly unexpected ones.

There was no wind and just about no current and so the paddling was easy, with heavy shore bird air traffic and colorfully decrepit old sailboats anchored here and there. Even when the sprinkles began, they stayed weak. A couple of hours later, when I hopped out of the car to commune with the lazing elephant seals north of Hearst Castle (I put in plenty of Hearst Castle time on a visit a year ago), it was still sprinkling, and it made little difference to me, even less to the elephant seals.

Have you ever heard somebody beat on a plastic trash can with a baseball bat? That’s what an elephant seal sounds like when he wakes up cranky.

Tonight: Ragged Point, a tremendous clifftop spot, but socked in by fog when I arrived. Big Sur is just a few more miles up the road but if this fog persists tomorrow, I may see nothing but the line in the middle of that wriggling coast road.

– Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times staff writer

[Photo: Just a few miles north of Hearst Castle, elephant seals flop on the beach to doze and bellow; Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times]

Related:
California coast trip, Day 1: From Tia Juana River to the Hotel Del
California coast trip, Day 2: Juan Cabrillo, our state’s 1st European tourist
California coast trip, Day 3: South Bay bike-riding, Malibu boat-watching, Oxnard hot-tubbing
California coast trip, Day 4: Battle with an Oxnard surrey, inspiration at El Capitan beach

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 12:46 pm by Susan Derby and is filed under Big Sur, California, California's Central Coast, Family & Kids, Islands & Beaches, Morro Bay, San Simeon & Hearst Castle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.