All the images in this post, and many more, are available in this Google Photos album.
We’ve lived in San Mateo County for over 25 years…but there are still large parts of it which we haven’t explored. Driven by, sure. But when you “live in” an area, you tend not to think about visiting it like you would when you go on vacation.
Last week we decided to try vacationing in the County. We chose to stay a couple of nights at Costa Noa, a KOA-run campground near the southwestern border of the county. It’s quite close to a number of cool parks and beaches, including Ano Nuevo State Park, home to giant elephant seals.
Costa Noa
Costa Noa itself was a lot of fun! We went the glamping route — glamorous camping — which meant we slept — in beds! — in a tent put up and maintained by the facility. Complete with lights and, more importantly, electric blankets! Besides the glamping tents, the complex supported all sorts of RVs (and may have had some traditional tent sites, too). There were quite a few bathroom facilities around, all clean and well-maintained. Even better, there were good showers.
It’s definitely focused on family, particularly extended family, get togethers. While we weren’t the only oldsters in residence, we were outnumbered by young kids and young families. The complex has quite a few kiddie/family play areas, and it’s a rare moment when you won’t see kids tooling around on their bikes.
While we used Costa Noa mostly as a base from which to explore nearby venues, we really appreciated its well-stocked general store and restaurant. On top of everything else, it even sports great Wi-Fi, which let us stream shows when we wanted a break from reading.
Rustic it ain’t. But fun and convenient it most definitely is!
Waddell Beach
After checking in and dumping our luggage in our tent, we decided to cruise down the coast to Waddell Beach to see if we could spot any kite boarders. We weren’t sure there’d be any since it was a Monday. But there were quite a few!
Kite boarding, if you haven’t heard of the sport, involves riding a surfboard…while being towed by a kite. It looks like a lot of fun. And a great way to build upper body strength :).
I don’t quite understand how kite boarders can move both with and against the wind. But, man, when they get moving, the go fast!
Ano Nuevo State Park
We’d been to Ano Nuevo once, may years ago, before the park was established. At the time, Barbara’s aunt lived there (her property was eventually eminent domained by the state when the park was set up). It was pupping season when we visited, so we got to see the enormous infants — along with their even more enormous parents! Some of the youngsters grow unusually large unusually quickly. They’re called “super weiners”, because they resemble giant hot dogs.
July is long past pupping season, so we didn’t get to see any youngsters. But there were a good number of adults on hand, mostly sunning themselves on the beach. Interestingly, when they move, they only use their front flippers…which causes them to undulate. There’s so much force involved you can see reflections of the undulations bounce back from their tails after the initial wave hits the ground underneath their butt.
There were also lots of beautiful wildflowers along the trail, too…which was surprising, given that we were there in late July.
And some land-based animals, too, of course :).
The little guy sunning himself on the shore confused us, though. We thought for quite a while he was a young sea elephant…but after thinking about the situation while we were hiking back we decided he wasn’t. For one thing, he kept a good distance away from the sea elephants. For another, his snout isn’t shaped like a sea elephant’s. Maybe he was a sea lion?
Gazos Creek
Waddell Beach was exciting, Ano Nuevo was really cool, but Gazos Creek surprised us. We thought it’d be Just Another Beautiful Beach. And it was…except it contained a large, shallow body of fresh water, fed by the creek, which was inhabited by hundreds of birds. Big ones. Small ones. All sizes of birds.
They put on a constant show with their take-offs and landings, their frantic bathing, and their antics.
But the piece de resistance was when — for reasons we never were able to figure out — literally every one of them would launch into the air, swarming above our heads, flying frantically through and around each other…but never colliding.
Eventually, they’d settle down again and return to their earlier activities. Only to repeat the entire air show some minutes later.
There were so many birds around that I had plenty of opportunities to try and photograph individuals on the wing. Some of the shots are a bit blurry — it’s hard to pan with a subject when you have no idea what direction they’re going to go in next! — but the ones that worked ended up being really cool, IMHO.
All in all, a great little mini-vacation!
2 thoughts on “Vacationing in Your Backyard”
Very cool what you can find in your backyard.
GK
Ano Nuevo State Park
I’ve been looking at spectacular pictures of your vacation at Anu Nuevo State Beach the great and what I’m trying to find an easy way to name the birds you have plus a few of the flowers; by the way, some of the close-ups are really great.
I think I have documented all of the wildflowers in Montana de Oro State Park and I’ve put them in a book together along with the descriptions of each. I’ll be sorting through those also a few of the animals and so many birds of all kinds, but I do have names for them. I only have a small portion of the ones that are flying by.
Glad you had a great vacation. It looks spectacular. Take care.
I’ve been really busy with things .
I am our van needed major ignition system, work, plugs, and coils and generally generally a tuneup but now they don’t put a coil under the hood. They put a coil on each spark plug and the spark plugs are platinum so the whole thing cost quite a bit of money, however we got it back then it should last for another 10 years. Got lots of power and it seems like it’s brand new.