Refresher Course
Finding the new in the familiar
For our final Next Chapter outing of 2022, we stuck pretty close to home, taking a quick jaunt a couple hours north to the bucolic Los Osos Valley in San Luis Obispo County the week after Thanksgiving. The trip reminded Leslie and I of something we’ve been taught over and over again during our travels: No matter how well you think you know a place, there’s always something new to see or experience there — even if the reason it seems new is because we are experiencing it as slightly different people than we were when we visited before.
We both have deep roots in California’s Central Coast region. I’ve been here since 1978, when I moved from my family home in Northern California to attend UC Santa Barbara; Leslie is a Ventura County native. I’ve explored a lot of the region over the past four decades, including the Los Osos Valley and the Morro Bay area. In fact, one of the three hiking guides I wrote in the 1990s for Wilderness Press includes hikes in Morro Bay State Park and nearby Montaña de Oro State Park. (The other two focused on three Sierra national parks, and the California desert.)
Nevertheless, our four-day road trip brought us fresh trails and vistas, an enchanting wildlife sighting, close encounters with intriguing botanical features, and blessedly uncrowded midweek strolls along small-town waterfronts that on weekends are thronged by tourists.
The latter, by the way, is one of the great pleasures and privileges of travel in retirement.
Room with a view
Our base for three nights was on a working farm off Los Osos Valley Road. We rented the spot using Hipcamp, and to reach it we drove the van down a dirt driveway past planted fields, livestock, weathered outbuildings and a rusting collection of obsolete agricultural equipment, before climbing steeply to a large, level campsite atop a ridge.
Perched there, our view to the east encompassed hundreds of acres of cropland and open hillsides, just beginning to green up after recent rains. To the west was a stunning panorama of Morro Bay (both the bay and the town), volcanic Morro Rock, the knobby peaks of the Coast Range, and the gleaming Pacific beyond. We set up our outdoor camp amenities, poured libations, and toasted the sunset and the view.
The next morning, we headed into the town of Morro Bay. We easily found parking (another midweek travel perk) on the waterfront Embarcadero next to the Morro Bay Maritime Museum and across the street from a T-shaped pier that Google Maps labels an “Otter Viewing Area.” We initially thought that to be an overly optimistic assurance, given the inherently unpredictable nature of highly mobile wildlife, but when we crossed the street we were pleasantly surprised to find a raft of a couple dozen southern sea otters snoozing in the bay about 30 feet from the sidewalk. The prevailing onshore breeze was nudging them steadily toward the riprap embankment, so they would periodically stir themselves to paddle back upwind. Otherwise, they were basically motionless, floating on their backs, their heads tilted forward and chins tucked into the thick fur on their chests.
They look oh-so-cuddly, but they weigh between 50 and 70 pounds and make a living smashing open urchins, clams and other tough crustacean customers, ripping them apart with rather formidable dentition. Good house pets they would not make.
It was a blue-sky day, but the bite in the breeze reminded us that we were in a beach town on the edge of winter. We wore down jackets as we explored the waterfront, which in addition to the expected shops selling T-shirts, stuffed animals and other themed keepsakes, features several intriguing maritime artifacts. Perhaps the oddest of them is a fantastical underwater vessel that looks like something out of a science fiction novel: the Deep Submergence Rescue Vessel (DSRV) Avalon. One of only two such vessels ever built, it was designed to rescue sailors trapped aboard submarines stranded on the sea bottom. It was commissioned by the Navy in the aftermath of the April 1963 loss of the USS Thresher — a mishap that cost 129 lives. That it resembles a spaceship more than a nautical vessel is not surprise; it was built by the Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. in Sunnyvale.
After a late lunch at a cafe with a great view of the bay, we drove to Morro Bay State Park and explored the Museum of Natural History, which has been thoroughly reimagined and redesigned since I last was there. Then we were off to explore the El Morro Elfin Forest, a 90-acre preserve on the shore of the Morro Bay estuary, managed jointly by San Luis Obispo County and the California Department of Parks and Recreation.
Growing out of an ancient dune complex, the “elfin” trees are coast live oaks stunted by their impoverished environment, and range in height from 4 to 20 feet (mature coast live oaks typically reach 30 to 80 feet). There’s a great mile-long boardwalk leading through the woodland and several other types of habitat, with viewpoints of the estuary and tidal wetlands.
We returned to the park the next day and hiked a trail that took us several hundred feet up the flank of a rocky hill, granting us great views of the bay and the large sand spit that separates it from the open ocean. Along the way, we watched a bald eagle and a crowd of turkey vultures ride thermals high into a cerulean sky. As we descended and began looping back to the trailhead, we hiked through a grove of huge coast live oaks — some of the largest I have ever seen, with massive trunks, likely several hundred years old.
From there, we headed to Cayucos. Intimate and charming in a way that Morro Bay is not, the town is nestled between hillsides and the sea, and its main street (Ocean Avenue) provided us a pleasant stroll after an al-fresco lunch. From there, we drove a few miles up the coast to Harmony Headlands State Park, where we hiked a trail a mile and a half through rolling grasslands to an overlook with sweeping views of the rocky shore. Then it was back to our campsite, which we reached as the sun was setting. The next day, we headed home.
The year in review
Our trip to Morro Bay was a leisurely outing, in contrast to so many of the trips we took this year in Next Chapter. We drove more than 8,000 miles and spent 71 days on the road in 2022; along the way we camped at 26 different sites in five Western states.
We slept by mountain streams, in cattle pastures, in redrock desert canyons, on volcanic pumice plains, amid mist-shrouded coastal redwoods and in fire-scarred Cascade forests. We hiked through coastal sand dunes, across rugged lava flows, through twisting slot canyons and around alpine lakes. We traveled back through time amid Ancestral Pueblo villages last occupied a thousand years ago, and even further while hiking among the 200 million-year-old stone trees of Petrified Forest National Park. We paddled through whitewater and wildfire smoke on a wild river, watched elephant seals and sea otters on the California coast, and sought shelter in Next Chapter from desert dust storms and Pacific Northwest drizzle.
In other words, we had a blast. And we can’t wait for the road-trip revelations and adventures that 2023 will bring.
Happy New Year John and Leslie.
Looking forward to more of your great writing in 2023. Please know you’ve got an appreciative audience!!
Doug N
PS- The LOV and Baywood is our home away from home. We’ll be there again later this month to soak up the beauty.
As usual such a fun article about your experiences with Next Chapter and Leslie! I've never heard of Hipcamp, but will check it out...thanks. Merry Christmas to you both!