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!