Home»To Moonstone Beach in Cambria

The old road to Cambria from Hwy 46 proves to be fourteen miles of tortuous pavement. Santa Rosa Creek Road winds northeast along the creek on the east side of the Santa Lucia Range. They call it a creek for good reason: before the rains start, it's a piddly five foot wide and moves slothlike over small boulders and rocks down the valley to Cambria. Probably rages in the winter, though.

Moonstone Beach in Cambria is a must-see expanse of pebbled shoreline that showcases colored gravel, including lots of California jade. It was all the more exciting on the day we visited: a lone surfer hoping for surf didn't mind me taking pictures of him, and a lone beached and very dead sea lion provided a scrumptuous meal for more than a dozen vultures.

The west side of Morro Rock in the afternoon is a dull and lifeless mass of weathered volcanic dacite, sitting in deep shadows, but there are all sorts of lifeforms around it - cormorants, pelicans and other seabirds, non-native squirrels and homo-sapiens by the droves.