Morrow Bay and Elephant Seals

We used a nice county campground, El Chorro, as a home base to explore San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay.

A few miles south is the small city of San Luis Obispo, home of Cal Poly University, with a vibrant downtown with lots of shops and restaurants.  A number of folks had suggested we stop at Firestone Grill for California BBQ - tri tip steak sandwhich.  Took some doing, but we found some parking and got in the long line that stretched out the door to order.  It was worth the trouble - delicious sandwhich and great people watching.

We also explored Morro Bay - famous for Morro Rock.  From photos I had seen, I thought Morro Rock was a medium sized rock way off shore, but boy was I wrong!  It is huge and right at the harbor.  The sea otters were hanging out just below the rock and falcons next on the top of the rock, but we never did see them.

Morro Bay

Sea otters, wrap themselves in seaweed to keep themselves from floating too far

Morro Rock from across the bay

We left El Chorro on Sunday and drove north on Scenic California Route 1 to see the Elephant Seals, just north of San Simeon.  We spent the entire afternoon watching the seals.  The males have the big nose and they are here now to mate with females after the moms are done nursing their pups who were born in January. They are extremely noisy - the females arguing with each other to protect an area for their pup, pups squealing for the moms, and males bellowing to intimidate other males.     Quite a bit of hanky panky going on, but unclear whether the females were willing participants as the much larger males would get close to the female, clomp down on them with a flipper and worked very hard to achieve their biological duty to procreate, while the females seemed to loudly complain the whole time.

The elephant seals spend the winter here to birth pups, nurse the young for one month, and mate.  They do not eat or drink the entire time.

The seals spend most of the year in the ocean, diving between 500 and 5000 feet to find food.  Their whiskers allow them to sense prey moving - prey is fish and shellfish small enough for them to swallow whole.

They flip sand up over themselves to keep cool in the sun.

The males' noses grow starting at maturity at around five years old.  

Females arguing over beach space for a pup

The seals' eyes are ten times more sensitive than ours as they need to be able to see in the darkness of the deep ocean depths.

Pretty useless teeth, and simply catch they prey and swallow them whole.

Some are incredibly ugly and some are cute!  After watching for hours, we could see the different personalities.

They lose almost 50% of their weight while stranded on the beach and spend much of their time sleeping - the rest of the year they will hunt and eat in the sea without touching land.