As it was nearing dusk, I drove 20 miles north from San Simeon SP on Highway 1 as it leisurely winds through the hillsides with views of the pacific cliffs, exposed bare clay in some places where they’re too steep for vegetation, and covered in green where the cliffs can catch life.
Jagged stones, part of an outcrop, break the ceaseless waves near shore, but farther out they become infrequent until only singular stone brutes stand like sentinels as the water deepens. The waves will eventually wear them away in some future far from now.
North beyond the town of San Simeon, where the Hearst Castle keeps watch over the land from high atop its perch, the cliffs begin to climb and the hillsides more closely resemble their namesake, the Santa Lucia Mountains. The road, too, angles more abruptly, the slope more steep and winding. In the distance, a blue mist hangs over the sea as the sun sinks in cerulean waters.
Highway 1 along the Central Coast of California is, perhaps, the most beautiful drive in the world, and if it is not, it is surely in the running. Especially here, if you cannot experience awe then you may have a deficiency in nature’s neurons; spend some time here though, and I promise you they will begin to fire.
Despite this beauty, there are in this area few other drivers who venture north beyond where I am because about 30 miles north of San Simeon the road has collapsed into the sea from landslides in 2023 and has yet to be fully rebuilt—a monumental feat of engineering, to be sure. And so on a weekday at sunset it is especially, if not eerily quiet as I pull over and sit on a steel guardrail 500 feet above the sea and wonder at it all, at what feels at once like solitude and everything.
On the way back I stopped and saw the elephant seals again. If you are ever feeling down about yourself, if you have body issues, go have a look at them and you’ll feel better. They move and look like huge water balloons, obese in the extreme, with front flippers sized so small in proportion to their massive bodies as to be some kind of cruel joke. They make noises that sound exactly like burping, farting (epic burping and farting), and—the little newborns at least—screaming. And their method of locomotion on land is like the breakdancing move known as the worm; the beach has tracks where they’ve flattened a rutted pattern as though someone had dragged a weighted sled through sand. In just ten minutes of watching them—perhaps 200 of them strewn along a quarter mile section of beach—I burst out laughing no fewer than three times. I’m easily entertained, and fart jokes still get me.
I wonder if evolution may not be done with them yet, that some grander plan might still be in motion, but a motion that takes so much longer when doing only the worm. Though in water they are like ballerinas, I’m told. Still, here they lay in the sun all day on the beach, mating when it’s called for, snuggling with their little ones if they’ve done the deed already, farting, and burping. For about three months they’ll stay here, then return to the ocean for the rest of the year once the fat ass babies are ready to learn to feed. It makes me question which of us has been the lucky one in our evolution.
Moving again
I’ve been at San Simeon SP now since Jan. 11, apart from one day spent about 30 miles south in Morro Bay State Park. I’d meant to stay at Morro Bay SP 10 days and then another few miles south in Montana De Oro State Park, but the campground was packed and my spot had too many trees for my Starlink satellite internet to work effectively, which is key to working from an RV. Still, last year it felt like I was moving nearly every weekend, and while I was seeing more of the country geographically, it has been way less stressful to just stay put.
But tomorrow I hit my second 10 day max here and have to leave the park. I’m sad to go. I’ve gotten to know the area, the nearby town of Cambria and its adorable shops, and a few delightfully odd locals. But I’ve found a campground with availability at Morro Bay State Beach a stone’s throw from the waves where I’ll be for two days, and then on Saturday I head north on a 175 mile detour (because of Hwy 1) to Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, where I’m booked for most of February. I fear, though, that I may be left scrambling because of the tree coverage there. You never can tell quite how it will go until you get to a place, in my experience, because not every site has a campsite photo and if it does, it’s not usually pointing skyward. Saturday could be a very long day, but it will work out. It always does.
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