Elephant Seals, Piedras Blancas, CA

Dave and I, along with our friends, Greg and Betsy, who are staying in Pismo Beach for a month, took a day trip to see the elephant seals.  The rookery is located four miles north of Hearst Castle and fourteen miles north of Cambria on California Highway 1.

The entire Piedras Blancas population of 23,000 elephant seals is never in the rookery at the same time.  The number of seals on the beach ranges from hundreds in July and August to thousands from January through May. 

In late November and early December the adult male seals, weighing over two tons, arrive at the rookery and fight for dominance over a portion of the beach.  A dominant or alpha bull emerges from this competition along with a few beta males that are lower in the hierarchy. 

The pregnant females begin arriving about mid-December forming harems around the alphas, apparently choosing the beach rather than the alpha.  Birthing takes place within a week of arrival and usually takes less than an hour.   The new pup is born either head first or tail first and weighs around 70 pounds.  Right after the birth the mother vocalizes to her pup, bonding so that they can keep track of each other on the beach.

Pups nurse for four weeks.  After the four weeks of nursing the pup’s weight has quadrupled and the fasting mother has lost twice as much as the pup has gained.   Mother seals abandon their pups after they are weaned and return to the ocean.  The newly weaned pups have to make their way to the coastal tide pools, learning to swim and shedding their fat content.  When they feel ready, the pups go to sea and begin a foraging trip that will bring them back to the rookery in October or November.

The elephant seals have been coming to Piedras Blancas only since 1990.  Most of their rookeries are on islands along California and Baja, Mexico.  Heavily hunted in the 18th and 19th centuries for the oil from their blubber, their numbers were reduced to fewer than 50.  The development of kerosene and refined petroleum left them with no commercial value and their population has grown to over 200,000.  A free brochure at the rookery contained these details as more details about the molting of the males.  A seal cam may be viewed at http://elephantseal.org.

Betsy and Greg

The Piedras Blancas Lighthouse

After viewing the elephant seals, we drove south to Cambria and went for a walk and then lunch at Moonstone Beach.

Greg and Betsy on the boardwalk at Moonstone Beach

Unfortunately, this elephant seal didn’t make it back to the rookery and died along Moonstone Beach.

Monarch Butterfly Grove in Pismo Beach, CA

One of the things I enjoy seeing in Pismo Beach each winter is the Monarch Butterfly Grove just south of Pismo Beach and a short walk from Pismo Coast RV Resort where we are staying.

The butterflies arrive in November and depart again in February.  They attract a lot of attention, especially on warm days when they are out flying rather than huddled into bunches.

One fact that I learned this year about the migrating Monarchs is that they eat milkweed, a plant that is considered poisonous to some other species. 

It was hard to get pictures of all the butterflies flying around.

Thousands of butterflies were huddling in clumps.

Dave and I go on lots of walks while we are in Pismo Beach, and our favorite place to walk is along the beach.  One of the coastal walks that we do every year gives us a view of a natural bridge in the rock on the south side of Avila Beach.

And usually we can see people hiking in that area.

I think these are bougainvillea flowers.  We used to have bougainvillea bushes in our yard when we lived in Riverside, CA. 

Pretty flowers, but thorny leaves. 

2014 Review in Pictures

Okay, even though I don’t usually like “year in review” news stories, I couldn’t resist the latest blogging trend of putting a review of the year using pictures.  Thank you, Merikay and Craig , for starting this trend.  Here goes:

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas from Pismo Beach!

Yes, Dave and I are here in beautiful Pismo Beach, California, for a few months.  We arrived a week ago after an uneventful trip south.  We stayed at Seven Feathers Casino RV Park in Canyonville, Oregon, the first night, and Rolling Hills Casino RV Park in Corning, California, the second night.  Our final night on the road was spent at Sommerville Almond Tree RV Park in Coalinga, CA, chosen because it was only a couple of hours from Pismo Beach which made for an early arrival at Pismo Beach last Thursday.

Mount Shasta had more snow this year than last year when we drove down I-5.

We quickly settled into our spot at Pismo Coast Village RV Park.  We’ll move to an even better spot on January 4, but for now this is home.  The park is festive with the park and many RVs decorated for Christmas. 

Pismo Beach street view

Pismo Beach Pier with the Christmas tree of lights at the end of the pier.

The weather has been in the low-70s for a few days, but today it’s barely 60 degrees, with the sunshine making it feel warmer.

Last night we drove around looking at Christmas lights, and saw a house that had rigged up a snow-making machine, with the “snow” being bubbles.  That arctic-themed house looked a little out of place here at the beach, but it was fun to see their creativity.

View from Spyglass Park—those dots in the water are surfers!

Today we went for a walk at a park that was new to us, Spyglass Park, located at the north end of Shell Beach.  This small gem of a park afforded us wonderful views of the Pacific Ocean.

Before we left home for Pismo Beach, we had some excitement at home when a windstorm on Veteran’s Day knocked down about ten of our Leland Cypress trees and with them, took out the fences between us and three of our neighbors.  The trees are gone now and the fence repair will have to wait until we get back home in March.  Luckily, our neighbors were very understanding. 

We celebrated an early Christmas with Tim, Kiersten, and our granddaughters, Sophie and Anya, before we left for the winter.  And a couple of weeks before that we celebrated with Jonathan and his fiancee, Brittany.

Anya, 1 1/2,  Sophie,  3 1/2

I may not blog as often as I used to, but I still enjoy reading the blogs of others and occasionally putting in my two cents worth.

Merry Christmas and Happy 2015!

2014 Cranberry Festival, Long Beach, WA

Once again, I am about a month late with this post.  The annual Cranberry Festival was held in mid-October.  There were cranberry sales, a craft show, cranberry food items for sale, and my favorite event, a cranberry harvest demonstration.

Washington State University maintains cranberry test fields in Long Beach and this is where the demonstration took place.  All throughout the Long Beach peninsula there are cranberry fields owned and harvested by farmers who are members of a cranberry co-op which is connected with Ocean Spray.

At the museum, the demonstration showed wet harvesting of cranberries.  First, the cranberry field is flooded with water.

That loosens the cranberries from their vines so that they can be harvested.

The cranberries are pushed up and onto a conveyor belt where they are loaded into a truck.

The debris goes into a big pile by the side of the conveyor.

Here’s a picture of one of the test fields.

The cranberry museum and gift shop is open year-round.

The first time I ever saw cranberry bogs was when I visited Cape Cod in 1976.  Little did I know that I would eventually be spending a lot of time on the Pacific Northwest coast where cranberries are a big business!