Continuing North to Monterey and San Francisco

13th November 2016

From San Luis Obispo heading North, Highway 1 hugs the coast more.  Things start to get scenic and eventually it becomes the famous beatnik coastal get away of Jack Kerouac and his contemporaries, known as the Big Sur.

The traffic is more spaced out now and the scenery is enough to make you want to constantly stop.  I choose my spots.  One is a deserted estuary that flows under the road and onto the beach where I see a number of new species of birds and take in the wild Pacific vistas.

Further along, there's a much visited Sea Lion colony.  Here you can enjoy the sight of 1 hundred or more humans snapping photos of Sea Lions on the beach a few metres below the car park.  On the most part, the sea lions sleep or snooze but there are a few in the water and I actually spotted an Otter a short way out at sea.

Some young male sea lions are flighting so I try to take an amazing shot of this action.  I should have filmed it, but forgot my camera could do such a thing until much later in the trip.  Fool!  There were many sights where a video is better than a photo in the US.  I'll do better next time.



A fair distance further North is Los Ranchos National Park then Los Padres of which Big Sur is a part.  It's all beautifully scenic and worth a much longer visit than the day I drive through it.  I stop for a few hours, and walk into the wilds of Los Ranchos forest.  I hear what sounds like a bear scratching a tree but later, a park ranger tells me there haven't been any for many a year.  Might be a cougar though!  Yike.  I read too much about cougar attacks online.  Although they are rare, they can be pretty serious, occasionally resulting in death or permanent injury.  I read about how to deal with an attack. Fight back mostly.  There's conflicting advice as to whether running is a good idea or not.  Recent studies suggest people who run have less chance of serious injury. Either way, my worries are unnecessary.  Seeing one would be rare enough.  I'd love to see one.  Am not too keen on fighting one is all.  And when you're walking in a dark secluded wood a mile or so from anywhere, you do get spooked.  Some of the route felt a bit like walking through a forest from the Hobbit, dark and cool, with moisture all around.



I did see an owl, which is always cool, but the beach is where the wildlife action is mostly at, or where you can see it anyway.  It's mostly birds but I'll take that.  The sand here is perfect, the visitors respectful and the air clean.  Long gone are the grim faces of the city.  This is more why I came here: friendly (armed) park rangers and more relaxed locals.

Walking through that wild area made me want to see a larger area of it, perhaps Yellowstone or Yosemite.  But I want to see the really wild areas, not the Disney Land that some of these parks can become.  I know it's out there, I just need to pinpoint how to get in.  Winter is coming and much of the wild areas close because of snowfall.  It'll be a race against time, but I'm not in a hurry.


That night, I spent at Monterey HI Hostel.  There's so much to do here, yet I'm heading off again in the morning.  At dinner time I meet up with Marissa, who surfed at my place in London a few years back.  I'm getting used to the way the waitresses are here, and the food, and the fact she drove so far to meet me, yet it's not considered so far (about an hour) in this huge nation.