Montana de Oro State Park

Montana de Oro State Park offers several hiking trails.  The first one we chose turned out to be a dud (it was a canyon hike, but was very overgrown and the canyon was a bit of a snore) so we hiked along the shoreline instead, and it was fabulous.  This is from September 14.

This is the trail that we gave up on after around half an hour, the Coon Creek trail:

This is more like it!  We went and did a piece of the Bluff trail instead:

I liked this square-ish sea arch, with another cave in the background behind it:

Another arch, this one was 3-sided:

There's a linear pattern to the shoreline on the coast here that points out to sea:

After the Bluff trail, we dropped by Spooners Cove and had a look around:

For the last little hike of the day, we went to see the tide pools near Hazard Reef.  We had trouble finding the official trail though, and ended up on one of many trails that hike over the sand dunes down to the tide pools:

This is steeper than it looks ... the sand was HOT and the footing was unstable, being deep sand:

The tide pools were OK, pretty slimy and no interesting sea creatures, but I liked the pockmarked rocks that were everywhere:

Back up the dune trail.  This is the only hike I've ever been on where I had serious doubts as to whether we'd make it or not, the sand was so steep in places and the surface gave way with every step.  Here is Ed following me up:

Yay, we made it!

A great end to a great few days of hiking in and around this park.

Elfin forest and the Morro Bay sand spit

On Sept 13 we went for a couple of hikes.  The first was a short one through the Elfin forest, a reserve of coastal scrub just south of Morro Bay.

The main feature of this reserve are the stands of twisted oak trees, they are pretty cool:

They have lots of black sage, also very cool looking:

There are also good views of tidal mud flats where a river meets the bay:

The sand spit hike was in Morro Bay state park, although you get to it through the Montana de Oro state park.  You hike down from the dunes to get to the sand spit:

I love beach walking.  I'll spare you too many photos as they're pretty similar to each other, but I liked this one of the birds waiting to see what the next wave would wash in.  The sand spit was almost empty of other humans, it was very quiet out there.

These dunes are huge, the photo doesn't do them justice.  They're closed to hikers for a few months over the summer (including September, so we couldn't hike into them) for shore bird nesting.

Seaweed sometimes looks like a carrot:

Point Buchon hike

When I checked on the internet before our trip to Morro Bay, to see what hikes were the best in the area, this one kept coming up.  It's on private land, owned by the power company, and you had to reserve a spot (or so they said) and sign in at the trailhead.  Sounded complicated, but I did it, and on Sept. 12 off we went.

It's a hike along the sea cliffs of the central coast:

There were many freestanding pieces of the old cliffs left in the water as they had eroded away:

The formations reminded me of elephants:

Towards the end of the trail, what's that?  Why ... it's a nuclear reactor!  Now it's more obvious to us why we had to sign in at the staffed trailhead:

We hadn't noticed this sign before the hike, we did on the way back though:

Just a couple more photos from the day, it really is a beautiful place:

A view of Morro Bay, taken from a lookout as we drove back into town:

Morro Bay trip

OK, I am really behind on my blogging.  Back in September, we did a short trip to the San Luis Obispo area in the central coast area of California, basically to make sure we didn't want to move there instead of back to Canada.  We decided living there wasn't for us, but we had a great time making sure about that.  In the next few days I'll post some photos from our trip.

Here are some from Sept. 11, when we walked out just before sunset to Morro rock.  This sculpture below had me going, at first I thought someone really had left some garbage behind at the harbour:

Me with the iconic rock in the background:

This bird hopes you are some kind of scofflaw:

M&Ms: Coffee Nut

I don't know if this is an official Halloween flavour, but it came out shortly after BOOtterscotch.  Supposedly "Coffee Nut" is an award-winner, but I never heard about the contest.

I have to admit this one is a bit of a disappointment.  The coffee flavour is so faint that you really only sense it as a bit of an aftertaste.  They're pretty much a peanut M&M, which however is my favourite standard flavour, so it's not exactly a crushing disappointment.  Still, I had been hoping for a bit more of a mocha hit.  I still recommend them, just don't expect too much coffee.

M&M review: BOOtterscotch

The chocolate holidays often come with special M&M flavours.  This Halloween brought us BOOtterscotch, a white chocolate butterscotch flavour.

These were really good!  I don't think they've produced a white-chocolate flavour yet that has been a dud.  They've very flavourful and boo-tterscotchy.  Recommended.