Travel + Leisure - India & South Asia
Exploring California’s Central Coast
Getting There
United Airlines (united.com) flies non-stop from Delhi to San Francisco International Airport. Carmel is two hours by road.
Stay
Mission Ranch Laid-back luxury and countryside views on the grounds of a 19th-century former dairy farm in Carmel. Doubles from `9,550; mission ranchcarmel.com
San Luis
Creek Lodge
A boutique hotel in downtown San Luis Obispo that accents a modern farmhouse aesthetic with beachy bohemian touches. Doubles from `12,414; sanluis creeklodge.com
White Water Cambria
Nina Freudenberger refurbished this 25-room inn near Moonstone Beach. Doubles from `8,374; white watercambria.com
Eat & Drink
Bayside Café
Stop by this Morro Bay hang for classics like crab Louie and tri-tip French dip sandwiches.
Entrées `808–`2,130; baysidecafe.com
Aubergine
Chef Justin Cogley adapted to COVID-19 by taking his Michelinstarred Carmel restaurant outdoors. Tasting menu `15,058; aubergine carmel.com
Dockside Too
A Morro Bay staple for oysters. Entrées `955–`1,543; morro baydockside.com
Ember
The wood-fired pizzas and rib eye are the standouts at this Arroyo Grande eatery. Entrées `1,836–`3,526; emberwoodfire.com
Mistura
Don’t miss Nicola Allegretta’s organic Peruvian restaurant in San Luis Obispo. Entrées `2,200– `2,566; mistura restaurants.com
Ruddell’s Smokehouse
You won’t find a more delicious quick seaside lunch than the tacos at this Cayucos stalwart. Entrées `440–`1,028; smokerjim.com
SLO Provisions
Snag artisanal sandwiches and baked goods from this popular San Luis Obispo purveyor. Entrées `661–`1,616; sloprovisions.com
were it not for a duck blind, I would’ve run smack into a bald eagle on a low cypress branch. The eagle and I remained, breathing in air that smelled of evergreens and salt until I got distracted by a commotion in the water. The frenzy of upright fins disrupting the shallows turned out to be a fever of shovelnose guitarfish, a type of elongated sea ray with a shark-like dorsal.
After lunching on crab Louie at the Bayside Café, in the marina, I rented a kayak and navigated marsh-grass channels filled with wading birds. Great blue herons towered over willets and dunlins, western snowy plovers racing past on their long legs. I paddled into the bay for a look at the brants— Canada geese’s smaller, fancier cousins—that had flown in from the Arctic Circle.
Later that afternoon, Penny joined me for a stroll through Montaña de Oro, an 8,000-acre state park with pristine peaks, miles of beach, and a songbird-filled canyon that leads to a treacherous surf break. We lingered on the Bluff Trail, a Cooper’s hawk wheeling overhead as a scarlet sun dropped behind the ocean.
DESPITE BEING A CITY of nearly 50,000 people, San Luis Obispo is abundant with nature. I made the 20-minute drive from Morro Bay early the next day for a hike up the 457-metre Bishop Peak. Like Morro Rock, it’s one of the Nine Sisters, a family of volcanic leftovers that runs from the coast to almost 30 kilometres inland. Winding to the top for a vista of Bishop’s siblings, I had the day’s first encounter: a California thrasher. Bobbing his tail, whistling like a champ, the drab gray bird used his sickle-shaped beak to dig up dirt and uncover beetles.
Famished after climbing, I grabbed rotisserie porchetta and a ginger cookie at SLO Provisions to take with me to Laguna Lake Park, which abuts an area of sprawling scrubland. Hooded mergansers glided in the water, the male sporting a two-tone pompadour. Western bluebirds flew from fence posts in flashes of cobalt and crimson. Perched on a Frisbee-golf basket was the songbird I’d come for: the loggerhead shrike, gray-white in a black cape and bandit’s mask. A diminutive carnivore, the aptly nicknamed ‘butcherbird’ impales mice and lizards on barbed wire.
I recorded the sighting on my eBird app and drove south to Pismo State Beach, a hidden gem in Oceano that Elinore had mentioned. Around 19 kilometres away, near the town of Pismo Beach, the sands are often disturbed by roaring ATVs. But Oceano’s dunes are protected. A butterfly grove offers respite to migrating monarchs, and campsites adjoin a wooded lagoon. The visitors’ centre highlights local history. Like many coastal birding sites, Pismo has abundant food sources that also drew Native Americans—the Chumash left shell middens after dining on clams.
In the 1930s, a group of bohemians known as the Dunites created Moy Mell, a utopian community that attracted the likes of Ansel Adams. Circumnavigating the ethereal lagoon on foot, I could see why the Dunites believed that the place had a mystical energy. According to eBird, 269 species have been sighted there. Double-crested cormorants roosted in trees. Green-winged teals, with their punk-rock feathers, swam by.
It was getting late, and I was hungry. Ember, where Chef Brian Collins specialises in wood-fired, farm-to-table fare, was just 10 minutes away in Arroyo Grande. The food writer in me tugged at my shirtsleeve. Still, I lingered beside the lagoon, reflecting on the ways in which bird-watching expands my world, steering me from the news, menus, and my other human obsessions.
A common yellowthroat called from the thicket, its song sounding like which-is-it, which-is-it? A marsh-loving warbler that wears a black mask, it might have lived there, or it could have just been stopping to feast on bugs on its journey northward for the breeding season. Which-is-it, which-is-it? I wasn’t sure, but I made a mental note to study up on its migration patterns and diet on my Audubon app during dinner. This bird was a tiny thing, weighing no more than a third of an ounce, but its travels and appetites, I understood, were no less urgent than mine.