Avila Beach is a small town in the southern part of SLO county. Located at San Luis Bay, the town faces south and thus has a warm microclimate with gentle surf. I was there on Friday night and the town's famous warmth was absent - 40 mph winds were howling through the canyon out to sea, creating waves heading away from shore. Although you can't tell in this photo, I was being pelted with sand.
While exploring the shops in Chinatown, San Francisco, this one stood out due to its huge collection of lights and lanterns.
A few friends and I drove up from San Luis Obispo to San Francisco for Friday night and Saturday. Most definitely an awesome trip. This is the view last night from Conzelman Road in the Marin Headlands - those lights on the otherwise dark hillside are car headlights.
It was a stormy day in San Luis Obispo, but that meant for dramatic skies. Indeed, sunset proved to be an amazing time, with fast-moving clouds and beautiful shades of pink and orange. The non-native grasses, which can be seen in the foreground, are already drying up, despite all the late-season rains we've been having.
First it was a tidy tip explosion, but a return to Shell Creek Road revealed an explosion of lupines.
I returned to Shell Creek Road again yesterday, the third time in several weeks. The wildflowers were still as beautiful as ever. My friend and I did some hiking up into the hills and found a small canyon whose floor was carpeted in these lupines, goldfields, and tidy tips.
The goldfields are going downhill in terms of bloom, but the lupines and tidy tips are still at their peak! With the upcoming storm, the wildflower bloom should be prolonged a week or two.
A view into Los Padres National Forest and Grass Mountain, seen from Figueroa Mountain. Poppies and goldfields are in the foreground, while vast sheets of lupine carpet the distant hills.
As we drove down Highway 58, a dirt path leading off to some ranches caught my eye because of its unusual name: Shooting Star Road. On the way back from Shell Creek, we stopped at this road and saw spectacular masses of goldfields with scattered sky lupines mixed in. No shooting stars, but definitely gold.
The California poppies are in full bloom on top of the Cal Poly "P" ridge. The "P" is a large monument-like letter engraved in the hillside above the Cal Poly campus. The ridge above the "P" is covered in wildflowers right now.
Multicolored carpets at Shell Creek Road...the species you see here include goldfields and owl's clover.
