Framedlight

We hadn't got far north along Highway 1 before we noticed a sign for Carpoforo Beach. Not being people who pass by, we stopped the car and walked the quarter mile down by the Carpoforo creek to the sea. This involved manoeuvring round quite a large lagoon at the top of the beach and a smaller pool that was crammed with birds. The beach was very rocky and there were a couple of intrepid surfers defying the rather murky weather and tasting the waves. I was so impressed by the scenery, the rolling surf and the stormy skies I had to make some monochrome conversions of the pictures, which I will place second along with a American coot who was making her way across the sand!

I thought it might be amusing to show you the difference between our style of car camping and the goliaths we often parked next to. Here are a couple of pictures of our car first thing in the morning at the campsite at San Simeon. We left San Simeon and started our tour up Highway 1 and the fabled stretch of road and coastline, the Big Sur. However Mairi was so entranced with the elephant seals that we had to pay a return visit. We also saw the sea otters again, this time two in the same vicinity and also many of the extremely ugly turkey vultures which soared over our heads continually. The natives did not always seem friendly and suffered from runny noses. Tempers could be lost very quickly But hanging around in the water was quite relaxing The sequence below shows the fighting between the juvenile males. The sea otters were a lot prettier and spent their time catching crabs, breaking them open with their stone ...

It was getting late in the day so we went back to the pier at San Simeon, hoping for a sunset. We were not to be so lucky, low cloud  and mist came in as it was getting dark but the low light gave me the chance of some long exposure of the sea and pier. We spent the night at the San Simeon State Park campground which we had booked in advance, not wanting to be stressed out looking for a space. The pier photographs are here, both in colour and monochrome.