Monarch butterflies overwintering in Eucalyptus trees in Morro Bay
The Housesit was only six days and it’s flown by, and gone! Day four, Thursday, Thanksgiving, we went south by half an hour to Pismo beach, for another Wildlife first. The overwintering of the endangered monarch butterfly. In a little tiny grove of eucalyptus trees, thousands of monarch butterflies are spending their winter. There were a few flying about and it took a while to get your eye in, but once you did they were just hanging in the trees making eucalyptus look like wisteria! We waited for the talk, which we weren’t really expecting, what with it being Thanksgiving, and she was very good, not spontaneous, but very rehearsed and informative.
We learned all about the lifecycle of the butterfly, that starting on February 14th (which might have been a little bit of poetic license) then butterflies start to mate. The female will only lay her eggs, one per leaf, on the native Milkweed. They hatch in 4 days, the very hungry caterpillar then eats and eats and eats for a fortnight, before becoming a chrysalis and then a butterfly. This continues for 4 generations, each one spreading a bit further out, so in the course of one season they can get as far as Canada. At a certain point, to do with the availability of milkweed, a switch is flicked, egg laying stops and the ability to take in vast amounts of nectar begins. These butterflies will then return the distance it has taken four generations to spread, and overwinter, waiting for the following spring to breed and start all over again. Three years ago their numbers in this grove were in the low hundreds, this year so far there are 24000 (yes, they count them, two people will count one tree and if they are more than 5% different, will count the same tree again, till they are closer!) This is still only 10% of what it has been, but obviously it’s better!
The Eucalyptus trees were originally planted as a wind break for the RV park next to the beach, but the butterflies also found them to be a sheltered site for their overwintering. They come back to the same site every year, not the same one's, but the great-great-great-grandchildren of those who were here the previous year. How do they know? We walked down through the sand-dunes to the beach. The RV park was full, it was a warm day and families were gathered outside their RV's with BBQ's cooking Thanksgiving lunch. Its a big celebration here, we've heard some consider it more important than Christmas
This little Chickadee posed for us by the beach
Back to the house for cheese on toast, the simple pleasures of having a kitchen, before heading off to Bishop Peak, only 475m, but only 6 minutes from the house, and in direct line of sight. According to Brian it had to be done. And so it was! Not sure the cheese on toast actually helped but it was a good hike! See our short Relive video with photos: click here
Bishop Peak from the balcony of the housesit house. It has to be climbed! We went up from the right, which doesn't look that steep, but it was quite relentless: 323m of ascent in 2.24km and we were on top within an hour of starting
View from the top. San Luis Obispo
Friday we went 30 minutes north to Morro Bay, home of sea otters (or odders as it is pronounced here). We didn’t think we could beat our first sea otter sighting in Monterey, but we were wrong 19 assorted mums, and by now, largish pups, just floating around, so close to the shore, in the harbour. Watch his video for 10 minutes of cuteness, it’ll just make you smile! We then went round to the other viewing area, where we saw nothing, but we had to check. As we were coming back, we eventually saw a few in the water, but think they must have been from our original viewing as by the time we got back there, there were only 5 left. We were thrilled with our day!
Down there in one of those houses are the two cats we were looking after. Beyond, just peeking through some of the hills you can just see the Pacific Ocean
Saturday the end of the sit, so house cleaning and farewells to the delightful Winston and Stevie. Who knew an automatic feeder could be so entertaining! They knew something was going to happen about 30seconds before it did, and then it sounded like they’d won the jackpot on a one armed bandit! We waited to hear Sharla had landed and headed south, aiming for Santa Barbara. We stopped en route at Solvang, Danish centre of the USA, it really felt like we were somewhere entirely different, buildings, windmills, bakeries and lots of tourists. A really interesting stop for coffee and cake, which we had to queue for, every bakery had queues! By the time we arrived in Santa Barbara there was not time for much apart from dinner, so after a little research we drove (only about the third time we’ve driven for dinner) to the pier and the shellfish company. The queue was long, but not as long as it appeared. You put your name on the list, number in party and whether you wanted to be inside or outside. As a space became available (I say space as there were no tables inside, just the bar and stools at shelves round the edge of the room) they came and shouted the next name on the list. We are obviously better at queuing than many others as our time came much quicker than expected! We had a modest, but very good, clam pasta dish, but looked at the crab and decided we had to come back tomorrow.
Here's our Youtube video of the sea otters at Morro Bay. It's just under 10 minutes long and its full of very cute sea otters. I just couldn't edit anything out they were too cute!
We spent quite a lot of this morning planning and booking our time in LA before walking along the seafront via lots of craft stalls. The tourist information sent us downtown to the court house which we had read about. It was a lovely building, had some great murals and a tour in half an hour. We waited and did the tour. He knew his stuff, but wasn’t the most scintillating character! He did also go on a bit! See a short video of our town walk with photos: click here. We had to go back to the motel before going out to eat, as it was getting decidedly chilly, so a fast walk, before driving to the pier again. Alphonso, our server from last night obviously didn’t believe us when we said see you tomorrow, though did eventually recognise us. We were then his favourite people, he knew which beer we wanted, and to go with the 3lb of crab offered us a cup of chowder and a Caesar salad to start ‘on the house’ who are we to say no? The crab was fab, never easy to eat, but as I said to him, if enjoyment is proportional to mess, we loved it. Bit more chat, and when he brought us the bill he said “I’ve done a little something for you guys” yup, he’d ‘comped’ the three beers at $8 each, as well as the soup and salad! What we’d expected to be one of our most expensive meals suddenly became one of our cheapest! What a very nice young man, I felt quite emotional with the total kindness of strangers.
They were just so adorable we were there for a long time just watching them. Completely wild and there as it was safe for them, they later left to go hunting for their lunch. They have to eat 25% of their body weight each day to survive. Hard to believe they were hunted to almost extinction for their fur in the 19th century. They were thought to be extinct, but a few survived and they all now descend from there, still endangered but more stable now
Floating in their safe port
The rock at Morro Bay. We walked round it to see the Pacific breakers coming in. It looks very climbable, but climbing is strictly not allowed with a $2000 fine. The reason is its full of wildlife, some people had telescopes trained on nests. We saw young Burrowing Owls on their nest through one and a type of heron through another
We passed by a tree full of Night Herons on the way round the bay. This was the only one I could get a good view of, the others were obscured by branches, including some spotted youngsters that were just too hidden for a good photo
Rock art!
The raging Pacific even on a calm, sunny day and the reason sea otters bring their young into the harbour until they are big and strong enough
Managed to get this shot of a little lizzard with no tail (they detach and leave them wriggling to distract predators and then grow a new one). He didn't know which way to run when he saw us, but eventually decided on a safe route and ran off at high speed
We visited the Morro Bay Maritime Museum which was small but interesting. This sub was built following the sinking of the submarine USS Thresher, which sank in waters too deep to rescue the crew. It had a big impact on people as the crew were still in contact on the seabed, but nothing could be done to help them. This rescue sub was built to stop anything like this happening again, but it was never used
In the lovely town of Solvang. It felt as though we'd been transported to Denmark
Even the hotels were built in Danish style. A very pretty town
Onn to Santa Barbara and the Seafood Restaurant on the pier we visited two night running
We watched the sunset while we waited for a table
Shellfish straight from the sea, they work really hard, it's very busy and the food is just fabulous!
The largest fig tree in the US apparently. It was on the list of things to see in Santa Barbara, so here it is
Street art in Santa Barbara. He's not a real window cleaner, just a statue. There were many similar sculptures all around
The very nice Courthouse in Santa Barbara, a must visit and free tour. Only built in 1929 (and made earthquake proof following the original buildings demise in a 1925 earthquake, it looks much older
There were 360 degree views from the tower with great views over the town, Pacific and hills. Notable people which live or have lived here are Harry and Megan and Ronald Reagan. Apparently Queen Elizabeth II visited here in the 1980's to see Ronald Reagan. We kept a sharp eye open for either Harry or Megan but didn't see them
Some of the wonderful murals in what used to be a courtroom
Two fishermen working off the coast last night as we waited for our table on the pier
Before we go, a few photos from our housesit. Here's Stevie (left) and Winston on their fabulous climbing frames. Happy cats!
They spend ages playing together, sometimes nicely, occasionally with some hissing and chasing at high speed. How nothing gets broken is anyone's guess!
But there were some moments of peace too
Had a bit of an accident with my glasses, they broke in half. Fortunately Sharla had some excellent glue that she directed me to in one of her drawers, so I managed to glue them, hopefully successfully. Fortunately I have another older pair with me (I had previously broken those too when at Tony and Nickys in Scotland during the pandemic. They are also glued together but have remained so. Hopefully these will too)
My ParkRun in Silicone Valley. It was the 99th ParkRun they had run in Byxbee Park. I had a not very impressive time of 29min 26 sec and came 52nd out of 85 runners (haven't run for about 6 weeks, that's my excuse). However, I did come first in my age category of 65-69 so that was good (I may have been the only one in that age category but that doesn't matter!). It was a lovely, but cold day, everyone was friendly and we had coffee and biscuits at the end! The run started at 8:00am and, with a 45 minute journey time we had to get up early, much to Jackies delight! Have a look at my Relive video of the route (no photos as Jackie didn't take any! Click here
It’s taken me a while to remember what we did on Saturday, and now I have I know why I had blanked it from my memory! We had to get up early, to leave the house at 06.45 for a 45 minute drive to a Park Run in Bixby, near Silicon Valley. The second of two possibles in the whole trip, and he did manage the other, in Tucson too. I went too, because he had a strange Silicon Valley fixation, and I’m in trouble because I didn’t take any pictures of him running his 5k. It didn’t even cross my mind he might want a sweaty running picture on the blog! Anyway, I was doing important encouraging as everyone came past. It was a good atmosphere, full of English accents, and I think he enjoyed himself.
Byxbee Park is right in Silicone valley, 4 miles from both Facebook and Google and I felt I couldn't leave without taking a tour round the major well-known tech companies. It was a Saturday and they were all closed, so I had to console myself with photos outside. Here's Facebook, or Meta as they are now known
We then, yawn, had to, yawn, drive past Apple, Tesla, Hewlett Packard, Meta (was Facebook), yawn, and two garages, the one where Steve Jobs started Apple, and the one where Hewlett and Packard did whatever they did! I’ve had more exciting mornings.....
On a suburbian street close to Stanford university is this building that is now an historic monument. At 367 Addison Avenue, the little garage behind this house is where Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started building high tech instruments in 1938, following the advice Stanford University where they had both attended. It is now considered the birthplace of Silicone Valley. A toss of the coin determined the order of their names for the company that we know as HP or Hewlett Packard
Sunday we had another earlyish start, we left at 08.30 for a 4 hour drive to San Luis Obispo or SLO as it is known, for our Thanksgiving Housesit. So here we are with Winston and Stevie, two very cute, indoor cats. Talk about things coming in threes, three lots of free accommodation, and three lots of cats. We had a quick intro from Sharla before we were left to our own devices, and it’s been fab so far. They have a great set of beds, and shelves and climbing trees to keep them occupied. They also have an automatic biscuit dispenser, so at 14.30 and 20.55 a set amount of biscuits is dispensed into two bowls. The funny thing is that it obviously makes a noise that we can't hear, about a minute beforehand as they know, they hear something and wait! They also know that biscuits get stuck behind the little flaps so when they’ve finished little paws go investigating looking for the last few biscuits. It all sounds like the coins falling in a slot machine so it’s like they’ve won the jackpot and is as entertaining for us as them!
Rather than put on loads of photos of the companies we visited, here's a map. Click on each of the green markers and it opens up a box with photos and a little description. Move the map around to see where it is. The first marker is the parkrun. I know you'll be as excited as I was to see all these places and how they relate to each other!
Monday we food shopped (I have an oven, it’s brill), washed and caught up with the Monday Club boys. Just a bit odd to be doing it at lunchtime! Tuesday we drove up the coast to Hearst Castle, the 28 year build of William Randolph Hearst, the media mogul and Julia Morgan the architect. It is an amazing property where he entertained anybody who was anybody from Charlie Chaplin to Winston Churchill. He also had a zoo, till he had to sell off most of the animals, leaving just a few grazers amongst the cattle on the ranch. I did see a striped zebra bottom as we were driving down the highway! Just up the road is an elephant seal beach. It’s a little early for the adults to be on the beach, but there were a few ‘resting’ juveniles. We were fortunate that there was one large bull, 18 feet long, 5000lbs (2.2 tons) who had had enough of eating 200 lbs of fish a day. He was conserving his energy as he won’t go back into the sea till after mating!
So here's are action packed charges for the week. This is Winston, very fluffy and a bit of a torment to Stevie (but she gives as good as she gets)
Today we thought we’d better go and look at SLO, with a self guided tour I’d found. Lots of shopping, but a few interesting buildings, a mission, an Adobe house and a Frank Lloyd Wright building that we walked past, but wasn’t mentioned on my tour, so we didn’t realise till we got a map from the tourist information. (Just a little side note, Tourist information is often located in the Chamber of Commerce, if you are looking!) The ‘highlight’ of the tour, and No1 attraction on Atlas Obscura is Bubblegum Alley, which really is what it says! An alley off the Main Street with endless amounts of bubblegum stuck to the wall! Really quite gross!
And here's Stevie, joining us on the bed
On a sad note, we heard from Fred that Zeph, who we last saw just over a week ago, is no more. Despite his fluid injections his kidneys just couldn’t take anymore. RIP Zeph
Winston on his activity platform that they really seem to like
It is quite high
Here's Stevie up there looking down on me on the sofa. Am I likely to get jumped on?
Elephant seals on the beach by Hearst Castle. This one's a juvenile with a snout not yet fully developed
Here's a real big boy resting on the beach. He is very large! We spoke to one guy who makes wildlife films for the BBC and National Geographic and he'd managed to film this one coming ashore, a rare sight.
Look at his big snout. He's huge!
A couple of juveniles practicing fighting
Here's a couple splashing about in the surf
I love this photo of a baby one fast asleep. Apparently elephant seals come back to the beach of their birth twice a year, so they'll be here again in six months
Have a look at this video of the juvenile on the beach. You can see his developing nose
Hearst Castle on the hill as seen from the Visitor Centre. The huge building on the right is the main castle, the cottages on the left are for guests (one cottage has 18 rooms, the other 10, so cottage is not really an appropriate name!). It took 28 years to build and was started in 1919 when WR Hearst was 56 years old and too old to camp up there as he said. He decided to build a little something up there in his 250,000 acre estate and it developed into this huge castle that wasn't finished when he died
The Neptune Pool, originally planned as a water feature it grew!
The main entrance to the building with many sculptures and artifacts from 15th century and some ancient Egyptian imported from around the world
One of the many very grand rooms inside. They are all so over the top furnished with very expensive original artifacts. Those tapestries on the walls, for example are original. I forget the story behind them but, apparently they are unique and the ones in the Louvre in Paris are copies. These are the originals they told us
All the rooms we visited were so luxurious and this was the last one we visited. Styled as a Roman bath its a huge indoor swimming pool. The ceiling tiles have been removed for an expensive refurbishment. The main reason the Hearst family donated the building to the state was the huge running and maintenance costs required. The family are still around and own much of the land still and occasionally still visit
Todays outing was a walk round the old part of San Luis Obispo. This is the first Presbyterian church, built in the 19th century. I won't put all the photos on from our walk round, instead, if you want to, have a look at out short Relive video which has 10 photos of interesting buildings and the route we took: click here
We saw a couple of birds on our walk round SLO. This looks a bit like a sparrow but it isn't, as it's much smaller. I hope Helen will let me know what it is and I'll add it later! Edit: Helen, Richard and John, have identified him as a Black Eye Junco. Many thanks, I know it took you a long time
And this one that Helen previously identified. We thinks its a Black Phoebe
This little pink thing is Stevies favourite toy. For some reason, after a while she takes it over to her water bowl and drops it in! We have to take it off here and go and dry it in the bathroom. Next day, she does the same thing!?! In the background is the automatic feeder and the two shoots that eject the biscuits into two bowls like money falling out of a one arm bandit
Did we talk about the view from the lounge window? Not bad is it. I'd like to climb that hill over there before we leave. I hope I get time!
And this is the view that greets me as I come in to make morning coffee (after feeding pussy cats of course!)
