In morning light the plants were just as bizarre! Many were in bloom, especially those from the southern hemisphere, perhaps because in their native land this time of year is the beginning of summer.

An Australian tree was in bloom with what looked like little fireworks explosions of red and yellow. A hummingbird was busy harvesting the nectar in the tiny yellow flower tubes. He stopped for a second, but the iridescence of his feathers couldn’t be captured.

We left the wide spot on the road in a light mist under cloudy skies and drove the curves of Highway 1 to San Simeon. We decided not to visit the Hearst Castle again, we’ve been there many times, but we did stop at the beach that has become a new colony for breeding elephant seals. We saw many more than had been there in past visits, so they may be thriving. Our stop for two nights was El Chorro Regional Park and was a surprising gem. Early in the morning we hiked up the Eagle Rock trail to get a view of the small valley all the way to the ocean and returned through an oak woodland. We also discovered the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden in a corner of the park. We returned to the garden at dusk and took some pictures.

The new visitor center (not completed yet) is a straw bale structure and quite impressive.

The emphasis in the garden is the plants of the Mediterranean climate zones of the world, including this area of the California coast, the central Chile coast, the western cape province of South Africa, and parts of western and south Australia as well as the Mediterranean basin itself. Some of the plants were very exotic to us and in the evening sun were even bizarre!

Our last day at the wide spot on the road. We motorcycled up to the Cone Peak road and stopped at the Vicente Flat trailhead to do a little hiking. Our ride gave us fantastic views of the coast and the hike gave us lots of exercise.

The day after Christmas brought some wind. We walked down to the ocean shore and watched the waves come in. It was low tide so we were able to walk onto the tiny secluded beach where we saw a lone elephant seal. We thought it was a carcass until a few flicks of its whiskers and a twitch of its skin, in either case we weren’t going to approach it!

Looking down out of the camper window I saw a Peregrine falcon perched on the dead pine along the highway below us. Later it was riding the wind and cruised past our window, spying the hillside for any unwary birds. We couldn’t get the camera out in time, but here’s a picture of the view it may have had of us!

We took a Christmas day motorcycle ride up Nacimiento Road seven miles to the top, turned onto Cone Peak Trail forest service road for 6 miles to the end where we had a view of the Santa Lucia range foothills receding to the east.

At the end of a wonderful day we grilled a salmon fillet and toasted the beautiful sunset.