May, 20, 2026
After visiting Hearst Castle we headed to the nearby beach where a massive number of elephant seals frequent. I was hoping to see a few…and here they are! Cool.
So cool that they were right here! (We are up on a boardwalk that is close to street level. It runs along the beach while keeping the seals protected from humans with fencing and vegetation between the walkway and the beach. As we walked further a larger stretch of beach was in view. It was covered with the seals on the sand and in the water.
While not as little and cute as the otters in Morro Bay, these elephant seals were fun to watch.
We saw the full range of the molting process. They can really look shaggy, but once’s the old winter coat is shed, their new one is slick and shiny.
You could see some personalities emerge if you watch for a while. Some seem to have tender, “puppy-dog eyes”. 🙂
Due to their massive weight, they have to rest often as they come up out of the water. The blubber that insulates them so well, really moves as they “inchworm” their way forward.
We saw all of the behaviors depicted on the above sign!
Sleeping was the most prevalent state we saw throughout the beach of elephant seals which makes sense since conserving energy is essential when on the beach.
Flipping sand:
Scratching:
Sparring:
Playful Spar and Rest. These cute juveniles spar playfully for a few seconds, and then immediately succumb to rest. LOL. They remind me of how human kids will wrestle each other or simply torment each other.
The seals rest a lot on their bellies. It uses the least amount of energy since they only need to “let go” with their front (fore) flippers and flop down on the sand. As they come out of the water it takes a lot of effort to propel themselves forward and usually somewhat uphill on the sand. You can see at the end of the clip above that just like humans, the seals are able to sleep on their belly, side or back.
I enjoyed these cute interactions…stretching, vocalizing, or maybe just singing a duet.
The quieter beach area that was closer to the parking area where we first started.
A weather front moved in as were ready to move on from the seals, and boy did it get windy. We planned to spend the rest of the day at Moonstone Beach. We were going to walk the extensive boardwalk along the coast, have dinner and hopefully enjoy a beautiful sunset. Plans changed when visibility was about 3 feet. We did, however, hang out at Moonstone Beach (inside Sadie) and had dinner in hopes the low cloud bank would lift. No luck.
We headed back towards San Simeon State Park and couldn’t believe what we saw. The sun had broken through in this stretch just 2 or 3 miles down the road! We pulled over into the next viewing area, and waited.
The person below was out on the beach when we arrived and was in the area looking for something till sunset! Have no idea what that may have been!
Considering how dreary it was from about 3 PM till almost 6:30PM, we were pleasantly surprised with this…
Tomorrow we leave for San Francisco.