Pismo Beach

Last month, we finally took an overnight trip to Pismo Beach, known as Clam City, U.S.A. Ryan had been obsessing over the idea of going clamming for months, so he did a little research on the internet, and discovered that this was the best place in California to do it. We left after church on Sunday, and drove about three hours north to a place called The Cliffs Resort. We wanted to take Portia and Wiley with us, and this place is well-known for being really pet friendly. We had just enough time to take the kids swimming (it was dark, but the pool was pretty warm), then went to bed. We didn't spend a lot of time there, but I'd recommend the place to anyone traveling with dogs. The next morning, we had breakfast at a little cinnamon roll shop. Elise was kind of overwhelmed, but she got over it. Fast.
At the resort and at the cinnamon roll place we were asking everyone we could about clamming, but nobody seemed to know anything. They acted like we were the first people they'd ever met who wanted to dig for clams. We got our hopes up when we drove past this giant clam on main street, but the sign next to it proudly declares, "Clamming Is Illegal!" We stopped at a ranger station near the beach and learned that, indeed, clamming hadn't been a practical pastime there in 20 years. It isn't totally illegal, but you can only keep ones that are 4 inches across or more. Basically those don't exist anymore. They're not sure if the place got overfished, if a disease hit the clams, or if pollution killed them, but Clam City is pretty much deserted of Pismo Clams these days. We were kind of disappointed, after all, that was the reason we had planned this whole trip, but as soon as we drove up to the beach we forgot our woes. Pismo State Beach is incredibly flat and shallow (I guess that's what made clams so abundant there in the past). And, for some reason, they let you drive on it! Our van actually drove in the Pacific Ocean. I can't imagine why the clams would all be dead, huh? Anyway, we found a spot, parked, and let the kids and dogs out to play.
On our way back from the beach (still in Pismo Beach, though), we noticed a sign for a butterfly grove. Since we still had some time before heading home, we parked and walked in to a cluster of tall eucalyptus trees. I could remember hearing about monarch butterflies, how they migrate south for the winter and stay in these specific areas each year, but I'd never seen it. It almost made me cry. It was so pretty, it was almost unbelievable. At first, all you notice are a strangely high number of butterflies flitting about under the trees, but then you realize that the clusters of seed-pod-looking-things on the branches in front of you are actually hundreds of thousands of napping monarchs. So, everybody takes pictures for a while. Then, for no apparent reason, one tree just explodes, filling the sky with butterflies. It was so, so, cool. Connor wasn't as impressed as the rest of us, but on our way out we steered him past a display table with a chart of the monarch life cycle, and a potted plant covered in caterpillars. He was amazed. Ryan eventually went back to the car to give the dogs some air, but Connor watched those caterpillars for at least half an hour. He refused to leave, it was cute.I'm not normally a fan of 24-hour vacations, but this one was pretty awesome. We had sand stuck to our car for more than a week. Oh, and we did stop at a local restaurant on the way out to get clam chowder and steamed clams, though I have no idea where the clams really came from.