Adventures with Luna: Day 11 - Los Padres National Forest

Right after breakfast Luna and I headed across the street to visit the beach we had been told about. It was the typical incredibly beautiful Big Sur coastline and Luna had some fun chasing sticks on the rocky beach. We left camp as soon as we returned from the beach and stopped to call home when we got back in to cell service. As I was speaking with my mom I saw a tiny tick crawling on Luna's head, I immediately got it off, checked for more and decided soon after that it was time to head to a hotel that evening to get cleaned up and do some clothes washing.

Less than five minutes after hanging up the phone I came across fields and beaches with hundreds of elephant seals, it was absolutely incredible! I drove on to the promised elephant seal viewing site and pulled in to a large, crowded parking lot. The seals were very busy snoozing, sparring and communicating. Male elephant seals can weigh up to 5000 lbs while the females are up to a petite 1500 lbs. I spent around two hours watching them in awe and would have spent all day, but Luna was not pleased about being right beside the huge, noisy creatures, so we headed on. Right after leaving there we reached a field and beach where you can go right in to the area with them (keeping a safe distance from their sharp teeth) so I stopped there as well and went in for a quick look.

Our next stop was Morro Bay, I hadn't heard of it before, but Sean had mentioned it's beauty on the phone this morning and he was very right, it was stunning! I pulled in to the first gorgeous beach I saw and it was incredibly dog friendly with a large number of dogs running around off-leash on the beach, Luna and I were more than happy to join in! Luna had great fun chasing birds and stealing the tennis ball from a pack of four Golden Retrievers, the kind owner gave me the ball to use as Luna was fetching as if she was one of the retrievers every time I tried to toss it back to him. We spent quite awhile there enjoying the views and all the happy dogs.

We drove maybe 15 miles farther to San Luis Obispo and got a room at the Motel 6 there, Luna is tuckered out from a big day and I am trying to keep my eyes open while I go through the excessive amount of photos I took from our wonderful day.