California, part one (December 2017)

Written by ceddammit

It’s that time of the week again! Throwback Thursday – when I finally get around to sharing photos from not-terribly-recent trips. This week, it’s California, which I visited over Christmas in 2017. The plan was to fly to Los Angeles, spend a few days driving up the coast to San Francisco, hang out there for a few more days, then fly home directly from San Fran. But at the time, there were massive wildfires near L.A., so I spent the first full day driving northeast to get around the fires, then northwest to get back to the coast. My camera was buried somewhere within my luggage, so I took just a few photos, with an old iPhone. This is the only one I think is worth sharing…

There are still uncrowded parts of California.

If you saw my previous Throwback Thursday post, you may recall that I visited an area where everything is named Colorado. This week, we have an area where everything is named Morro (which I just learned is Spanish for “snout”): a bay called Morro Bay, a city also called Morro Bay, Morro Strand Beach, and the awe-inspiring Morro Rock, pictured below.

Morro Rock
A closer look at Morro Rock, giving a better sense of scale
mmmmm…prickly pears!
I happened upon this sand castle; I have no idea who built it.
A power plant right on the bay makes for some interesting photo ops.

As I wandered around Morro land, a few of the local residents allowed me to photograph them…

The next day was Christmas Eve, 2017. And on that day, I continued north on California State Highway 1, into the stretch known as the Big Sur Coastline. I found that the Big Sur Coastline reminded me of Hawaii, which I had visited a year before. This seems odd, because Hawaii didn’t remind me of my previous visit to Big Sur.

What’s that sound comin’ out of the hole in the wood?
I knew that the western states had serious problems with invasive plant species…
…but I didn’t realize they were invading from OTHER PLANETS!

Only a few miles into the Big Sur Coastline, the road was closed. There had been a massive landslide, which actually had the road closed for several months. So I had to backtrack towards Morro. This led to a nice surprise when I stopped at a beach I had skipped over earlier; a beach that has been taken over by elephant seals!

On the other side of the landslide, California Highway 1 goes a long way north before meeting up with any other substantial roads. So I had to drive inland (east) to get to a highway to go a long damn way north, to transfer to a highway going west, to get back to California Highway 1, where I went back south to reach my initial destination of the day after Christmas: Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. Here, I went for the short hike known as the McWay Waterfall Trail. There are some nice views at various overlooks along this trail…but I’ll save those for next week.

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