TUESDAY
& WEDNESDAY, JULY 21 & 22:
Spent
the better part of the day Tuesday at Point Lobos, just south of
here. This is a California State Park, considered by many to be the
Crown Jewel of the Calif. state park system, attracting over 300,000
visitors each year. Easy to see why. Designated a State Marine
Preserve, it covers 1,200+ acres of land and water along the rugged
coastline of Hwy 1. So it's a relatively small park, with only about
10 miles of designated trails. But what awesome natural beauty is
packed into this small area!
We
hiked 3 of the park's trails. All were easy. The first one, Sea Lion
Point, took us through one of nature's seaside and rock gardens to
magnificent ocean views and of course the namesake California Sea
Lions on the rocks offshore. Even from a distance, we could hear
their friendly gregarious barking. (The park's name derives from the
Spanish word for “wolves” - when they arrived here, they thought
the Sea Lions' barking came from wolves!) Sharing the spotlight were
some sea otters – always looking so cute and relaxed as they raft
amongst the swirling kelp.
(Most
of these pictures weren't taken in the overcast atmosphere. They
were taken on late Thursday afternoon, when it was considerably
sunnier & brighter. When Bill took the pictures on
Tuesday,
he experimented with a special setting on the camera to compensate
for the overcast greyness. But they turned out crappy looking for
the most part.
Not worth keeping. And not representative of how we experienced the
day. In spite of it being overcast, the water was lovely most of the time.)
A mom and her baby:
An individualistic sea lion swimming by himself:
The
second trail, Cypress Grove Trail, is so named because it winds
through one of two naturally growing stands of Monterey Cypress trees
remaining on earth. These cypresses, a trademark of this peninsula,
love these fog-shrouded, sea-breeze bathed headlands. It's awesome
to witness how they exhibit the forces of nature – gnarled,
buttressed trunks, contorted branches attesting to how they've
adapted to survive on these outermost cliffs at the edge of a
continent.
And
the third trail, not so dramatic as the other two, the Lace Lichen
Trail, is named for the grey stringy lichen that hangs from trees
which grow where the climate is cool, humid, and little sun. This
certainly describes the climate today. The sun never did come out,
and there was a layer of fog over the mountains across the bay.
Very, very typical for this area. But we didn't mind; in fact, we
actually enjoyed being able to walk in the coolness. Quite a contrast
to yesterday's warm, bright sunshine!
These inter-connected trails gave us a few hours of absolutely lovely, thoroughly enjoyable walks. Besides the spectacular cliff views, the marine wildlife, and the iconic cypress trees, there was an abundance of indiginous plants growing all around in and amongst the huge sculpted rocks.
And, despite the long line of parked cars outside of the park entrance (the parking lot was full), once on the trails, we didn't feel crowded at all. Long stretches of us being the only walkers.
On
Wednesday, we got a late start and drove the famous 17 Mile Drive
around and through wealthy Pebble Beach. It was very nice,
especially the stretch along the water, but, honestly, not any better
than what we saw yesterday. In
fact, we'd vote for Point Lobos over the 17 Mile Drive. Again,
a partly overcast day. The highlights were the couple of stops with
the Monterey cypress trees. (This is the second place on the planet
where a grove of these trees is indiginous.) Especially the iconic
“Lone Cypress,” which reportedly has withstood the Pacific's
storms and wind for about 250 years. Very picturesque.
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