Flutterby™! : Pacific Coast

Saturday morning things fell into place, so after dealing with assorted issues around here we finally got out of the house circa 10:30, and, after dealing with traffic in Berkeley for a loooong time (why don't I just go through the city?) ended up in Cayucos about 4:00. Cayucos is a little town on the coast where the shoreline flattens out a bit, south of the 90 or so miles of mountains plunging straight to the sea that is Big Sur.

So we wandered out on the pier and watched folks surfing, then wandered through town. Stopped to take pictures of a few butterflies that were bothering some flowers, got into a conversation with the woman who ran the candy shop about the egrets coming in at sunset to nest in the large tree in the back. Had dinner at Hoppe's so we could sit in the back garden and watch them arrive. It was, indeed, pretty darned incredible to see all of those bright white birds perched against the green tree in the twilight. No pictures, alas, but one heck of a way to dine. And we got a few of the butterflies:

On Sunday we pedaled south to Morro Bay, a small town on an inlet sheltered by that huge rock you can see in the first picture above. The major attraction of the town is a largely unremarkable tourist district, with a few exceptions: The rock itself, of course, not legal to climb because of peregrine falcon nesting, or somesuch; The Shell Shop, an incredible blend of bygone aesthetic tastes coupled with a boatload of really gorgeous shells; and we ran into the slalom event of the World Championships of Skateboard Racing, which sucked us in to probably almost four hours of watching some amazing skills. At the bottom of the course they're probably clearing close to 4 cones a second, and the english and motion on the boards was mindblowing. No pictures, 'cause I forgot the camera, but a gorgeous pedal along Route 1 both ways, and a really fun stop in the middle.