Nature walk: Montaña de Oro

We stayed in San Luis Obispo over Labor Day weekend, using the wedding we were attending as an excuse for a nice little weekend away. We spent most of Sunday in Montaña de Oro State Park, walking the Bluff Trail. I picked it because our California Hiking book (dragged across the country to where it was on longer useful and then back again) gave it a 1 for difficulty and a 10 for beauty, and that seemed about right. It was an easy walk, about three miles round trip over flat paths, with stunning views of the ocean. It was also about 20 degrees cooler there on the bluffs than it had been fifteen miles away at our hotel. We saw pelicans--which I love in spite of the fact that Brian says they are smelly (although he did manage to take about 70 pictures of them in two minutes using continuous shooting--why did I tell him about that setting on my camera?--when we saw dozens of them swooping and diving), because they look like pteradactyls--ane saw pelicans--and what might have been cormorants. We also saw a lot of other people--it seems to be a popular walk. And for good reason; look:








One thing we discovered this weekend was that, although we usually think our individual styles are different on nature walks, that's not actually true. Usually I complain that I want more exercise than I get walking with Brian, because he feels compelled to stop every two minutes to examine footprints (usually left by yet another raccoon, or someone's dog) or pick apart coyote poop (I think I'm supposed to call it "scat" since he's playing with it) to see what this particular coyote may have been eating. Brian agreed this weekend to do the walk my way. Which involved stopping every two minutes to take yet another photo of the coastline that was nearly identical to the vista I was compelled to shoot moments before. Oh well.