Well hello there. It has been a ridiculously long time since I posted anything, but I hope I have a good excuse – I finally finished grad school in December! The entire fall was a whirlwind of writing and crossing my fingers. I’m proud to say that after 3 1/2 years, I officially have a Master of Library and Information Science! I’ve been trying to recover and catch up on normal life ever since.
Since then, my challenge has been figuring out what to do with all of my new free time. I’ve been saving up so many ideas of what I wanted to do once I was done. It’s been hard to decide what to do first.
One of the first things I did was plan a trip to San Luis Obispo, which I’ll share soon. The second was to visit Ano Nuevo State Park to see the elephant seals. Each year, thousands of elephant seals head to the beach there to breed and give birth.
This time of year, you have to take a guided tour, to protect the animals.
I had never seen elephant seals before. It was the bf’s brilliant idea.
They were everywhere, even far up into the dunes.
We even saw a couple of males fighting for territory, off in the distance.
The walk to and from the beach was also lovely.
The guy on the left was staring back at us the whole time.
I guess he was fascinated by us also.
And there was also a lighthouse on a little island nearby, but you can’t visit it.
Those aren’t rocks or logs… they’re elephant seals, as far as the eye could see.
After the wonderful hike, we headed to the Davenport Roadhouse for lunch and Bonny Doon Vineyard for wine tasting, conveniently almost next to each other.
I wanted to do an overnight, so we stayed in Santa Cruz at a little B&B, and enjoyed some relaxation time at Tea House Spa and a scrumptious dinner at Malabar. If you go to Malabar, you must try the banana blossom salad.
It was a wonderful way to decompress before the holidays! I highly recommend taking the elephant seal tour. It was a beautiful, but not too strenuous hike, and they were quite a sight.
I'm at the Library 