Jade Cove

Looking down into the cove - you can see the trail down.

Our compatriot, park aide, surfer, and jade finder extraordinaire, Dylan, has shown us many beautiful pieces of jade he has found on the beaches near here.  He also told us about Jade Cove.  Jade cove is the purported best place to find jade in this area.  He told us the trail down was a “little climb” and we went for it.  After all, the cove is full of jade. So we slowly made our way down the steep trail, all the way to 30 feet above the bottom.  And then, we grabbed hold of the rope attached to the cliffs, wrapped it around our hands and hopped, repelled, and slithered our way down to the bottom.  We made it, and then we looked up, and wondered how the hell were we going to get back up.

The cove is full of rocks

And more rocks.

We scrounged through the rocks, and rocks and more rocks.  We found lots of green rocks.  Can they all be jade?  We talked to other jade searchers.  We still didn’t know if we had jade.  So we just kept looking and filling our pockets with rocks.  I did notice some young women sitting above the last 30 feet, waiting for their comrades and refusing to go down the last drop.  Did they know something we didn’t?  It did raise our anxiety level a tad! 

Once we had both gained about 20 pounds in rocks, we decided that it was time to climb out.  Mike, man with a worn out painful shoulder went first.  And then I climbed out.  Really, it was pretty easy, but we both kept thinking , just what would happen if we slipped.  There may be a reason why no other people our age climbed down there.  We haven’t been back.

Active jade hunter

Halfway up

At the top of the rope!

So we took our precious findings back to camp to show Dylan.  He very tactfully went through our collection and showed us what was “false jade”; a soft soapstone type of green rock, and what was jade. It turns out Jade is very hard and can’t be scratched with steel. The false jade pile was 39.99 pounds and the real jade, was one piece, ¼ inch in diameter. 

We have since learned that Sand Dollar Beach also has jade, and it has a real trail all the way to the beach.  Dylan finds beautiful pieces almost every day when he goes to surf.  And we find lots of pretty green rocks.  Soft rocks.

Elephant seals and serpentine roads

Parts of this coast look like Ireland

Herds of Elephant Seals

Light house in the distance

Fat baby

A few miles north of San Simeon, Elephant Seals slither out of the water and cover a few beaches from December through March every year.  After they arrive, the females begin giving birth to the pups they have nurtured for 11 ½ months.  When the pups are born they are very wrinkly, with skin enough to cover the fifty pounds they will gain in the first two weeks.  The mothers feed them for a month or more, and then breed again for next year.  Talk about being barefoot and pregnant all the time!  While they breed right away, they have a mechanism that delays the actual pregnancy until after the female has been able to gain some weight.   I envy female seals.  No one ever tells them they are overweight.  Once a year they become perilously skinny and have to eat and eat!  I bet they could eat all the chocolate they want!

 Males are often 16 to 17 feet long and weight 4000 to 5000 pounds.  The book in the Lime Kiln State Park office on marine mammals states, “They can be approached closely, usually neither fleeing nor attacking unless unduly disturbed.”  I have to wonder, how does a seal define “unduly disturbed”?  Can I tickle its strange proboscis?  Can I go 20 feet from the male and tell him he is really ugly?  What happens if I do “unduly disturb” him and he attacks?  I may be overweight, but I am nowhere near 4000 pounds!   I think I would be unduly disturbed if I had to flee an elephant seal!  We saw some males challenging each other and let me tell you, they move fast! 

Madona and child

New baby with wrinkled skin

Resting

Unfortunately, these pictures don’t really give you the complete affect of this gathering of blubbery breeders.  You can’t hear the males roaring at each other as they build their harems and challenge each other.  You can’t hear the females that scream like a woman in danger.  And you can’t smell their sweet fishy breath, or the fact that there are no treated outhouses on the beach.  Even so, thousands of tourists come every year to watch, and they are fascinating, partly because they are just so strange looking.  Happily, there are signs everywhere stating that they are wild animals and should not be approached.  I was not unduly disturbed.

Don't worry - there is a guard rail

Worry now - there is no guard rail

Highway 1 is like no other road I have ever driven.  The road is perched on cliffs and varies from one hundred to several hundred feet above the sea and rocks below.  The posted speed limit is 55 miles per hour, but that speed is rarely possible.  You weave through corner after corner slowing to 25 mph and then up to 40 mph and back to twenty.  And the corners!  You don’t want to miss a corner.  Yes, there are guard rails, but do you really trust them to keep you from careening down the cliffs?  The worst part about going over the edge would be that there is too much time between leaving the road and hitting the rocks.  All that thinking that you could do!

That is the road in the distance

  You pass through rock slide after rock slide in the process of repair, or still scarred from recent repairs.  We have been warned that sometimes there are slides to the north and south, cutting the park off from civilization.  (No worries, there is a small road that heads straight up and over the mountains.  However, we would never be able to take the trailer over that road!)  The maintenance costs must be horrendous. Warning:  don’t look up to see how many rocks are left to fall!  If you do, your heart will jump into your throat and pop out of your eyeballs!

All in all, this area of California is an enchanted land that I had no idea really existed.  It is rugged, it is isolated and it is magical!

Lime Kiln State Park

Lime Kiln Creek flowing into the ocean

Hills behind the park

OK – we arrived at Lime Kiln State Park almost a month ago and now I am finally posting about it.  I admit I have been slow, but I have reasons – yes real reasons!  When we arranged to campground host here, we knew that cell phone reception would be nonexistent, but we were promised a telephone line.  But by the time we got here, the ranger who arranged our volunteer positions was gone, the park was closed and we were on our own.   We moved into the host campsite, and then tried to connect our phone.  And we heard nothing on the other end.  Two days later a ranger helped us and he heard nothing.  We contacted AT & T and an employee came to the park with his truck, checked the lines and told us that the main line had been cut by a road construction crew a mile north and that it would take a week or two to repair.  Then we heard as much from AT & T as we heard in the telephone – aka, nothing.  Three weeks later, AT & T employees and their trucks were stopped at a store two miles north where we can make emergency telephone calls.  The clerk reminded them that we hadn’t had service all month.  So they came to the park, checked the lines and said that the problem was with the line in the road construction location.  They said it would be another week or two before it is repaired.  And we have heard nothing more.  We use phone connection to get internet, so the only way we have been able to connect in February, has been to drive 5 miles north to a pull off on the highway that locals call “cell phone point”.  The good news is that I often see gray whales feeding from the point.

The day after we arrived, two park staff came to train us on running the generator system and the water system.  They also handed us a poster of a man which told us to call police if we saw him.  The next day we saw him. He walked into the park asking to take a shower, even though the park was still closed.  We didn’t yet know about cell phone point.  We did know that we had no phone, so we drove 35 miles to the ranger office to make a report.  We reported, and were also provided with a radio for emergencies.  We also learned that a park aide had just been hired to join us in two days, which was wonderful news.  We haven’t seen the poster man again.  We have settled into a regular routine with the aide.  We have many more duties than we had at Saddleback Butte, but we still have lots of time to enjoy the park and the surrounding area.  We reopened the park for President’s Day weekend, and were completely full.  It had never crossed my mind that in warmer climates people would consider a weekend in February as a good camping opportunity.

The park is stunningly beautiful.  We have a beach with a stream running into the ocean.   One cliff has a very clear face in it.  One ranger’s spouse has called it Bob Hope.  I see more of a dog in the rocks.  What do you see?  The surf is very powerful here and I would be afraid to swim here.  We are in a canyon that follows the stream up to a waterfall and to 4 old lime kilns built in the 1880s to process lime out of the rock.  When we go to bed, we hear the surf and the stream running by.  We are surrounded by coastal redwoods and see whales, sea otters,  dolphins, elephant seals, golden eagles, California condors and beautiful scenery everywhere. 

Whale watchers.

Pussy willows

Yucca plants

Yucca, yucca!

Lime Kiln State Park is very remote.  The closest real grocery is 40 miles away in Cambria.  The road is very curvy and follows the coast from high up on cliffs.  You cannot drive it fast or while daydreaming about other things.  You do not want to miss the corners.  It is constantly plagued with rock slides.  And it is one of the most scenic drives I have every experienced!  It should be on everybody’s bucket list!

Path to the falls and kilns

 In the 1880s four big kilns were built here to process lime out of the cliffs.  A trail from camp leads to the still existing kilns 1/2 mile from camp.  During the few years that they were operational, 3000 barrels were moved by a pulley system from the top of the man rock to ships off shore that then transported the lime to San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Can you see a dog in the rocks?

Vanna of the kilns

Redwood growing out of the top of a kiln

Shamrocks cover the forest floor

The banana slugs here are very bright yellow!

Even the spiders are pretty.

Peeker!

Lots of trilliums are blooming.

Vanna of the waterfall.

 

I love it here and feel so privileged to have this experience.  So you can imagine my utter exasperation when I learned that Lime Kiln State Park is on the list of 70 parks that California will close July 1, 2012 in order to help balance the budget.  I could go on and on about how wrong I think this decision is, but I will spare you.  Just get here soon if you can!

This redwood is huge!

This redwood burl is big enough to hold the glass top for a table that fills the dining room, living room, bedrooms, kitchen and bathrooms!

Top of the falls

Lower portion of the falls

 The waterfalls are about 3/4 of a mile hike from camp.  They are over 100 feet tall and are really quite beautiful.

 The park suffered through a forest fire in 2008, and is recovering beautifully.  Fire fighters thought that they had put it out and left, only to have the fire reignite and spread over a large area.

I will post more about the surrounding areas soon, I promise, but I must now leave cell phone point and drive back to camp.  Tootle loo!