Winter on Highway One

Though it’s less than an hour south of San Francisco and hour west of Silicon Valley, the stretch of Highway One along the California coast between San Francisco and Santa Cruz seems oddly remote. The drive passes windswept beaches, foggy canyons, and solitary lighthouses, but only one or two small towns.

Although sunbathing is likely to be out of the question, nature conspires to make this stretch of wild seaside particularly attractive in late winter. If your timing is right and luck is with you, you could score the California coast wildlife trifecta: elephant seals, gray whales, and monarch butterflies.

This is pup time at the 4,000 acre Ano Nuevo State Reserve elephant seal rookery. Visitors are greeted by a cacophonous symphony of squealing, grunting, and roaring elephant seals on ranger lead guided walks through the elephant seal breeding grounds during the breeding season (December through March.) The males battle for mates on the beaches and the females give birth to their young on the dunes. The elephant seals are unperturbed by humans, so the guided walks get remarkably close to these huge animals.

Access to the reserve during breeding season is available only to rangers and those on these guided walks. The walks take about 1 1/2 hours, and cost $7 a person, but require advance reservations.Parking is an additional $7.
A sighting of these 5,000 pound creatures is very nearly guaranteed, but if you’re lucky, in early March you may also catch sight of a California gray whale on its migration north.

 
And just a few miles further south, you can visit Natural Bridges State Beach, where the Monarch butterflies winter. Thousands of Monarchs cluster in the eucalyptus groves there, resting there before some mysterious signal passes that it is time to flock further south. The beach is a lovely place for a picnic or a little tide pooling, but you may want to call in advance to see if the butterflies are still there–their arrival and departure times can vary.

Looking for budget lodging? The Pigeon Point Lighthouse Hostel starts at $20 a night and has a couple family rooms in addition to dorms.  With the stunning location under the lighthouse and the hot tub overlooking the ocean, if this place had queen sized beds and down comforters instead of bunk beds and woolen blankets, it would be a pricy B&B.

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