Weekend Escape: Pismo Beach : Feeling Fluttery : While butterflies feed in droves, humans don’t do so bad either

El Pismo, as it was named in 1886, has attracted generations of Californians to the recreations of a wide-open town. Dance halls and nearby duck-hunting sites long were augmented by a legendary assortment of saloons and brothels--through the turn of the century and on through Prohibition. Rudolph Valentino only enriched Pismo’s allure in 1921 when he and a film crew moved into town to shoot “The Sheik” in the nearby dunes. Modern Pismo Beach, a three-hour drive north of Los Angeles, has calmed down terribly, with a lot more surfers than movie stars now hanging around. The one remaining downtown bar, Harry’s, wisely prohibits “Hunting articles of any kind . . . including knives,” but celebrates the annual Clam Festival with an erotic reference tame by current standards: “Wham Bam Thank You Clam.”

Sex no doubt remains a matter of continuing interest in Pismo Beach. But much of the hubbub now goes on among the Monarch butterflies, which will end their winter frolic and head north between now and the first week of March. It turns out that sex is a Monarch obsession after waiting out the winter in Mexico and at about 200 groves along the California coast, including one at the southern end of Pismo Beach.

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And so last weekend, over two unusually sunny days, I and my wife, Judie, and Blossom, a small black dog straining at the leash, found ourselves in a stand of eucalyptus trees at the side of California Route 1, surrounded by 125,000 butterflies fluttering, stretching wings, sipping nectar and falling to the ground.

This swooning alarmed some fellow visitors. Were the butterflies about to die? They were fine, it turned out, just doing what came naturally, according to one of the California State Park docents at the grove. For most of the five months the Monarchs spend at these wintering sites, they hang together in the shadows like clusters of old leaves. In the last few weeks, they warm up and mate.

“This is what they’re doing here, hanging out and eating and having fun,” explained Dorsey Tuggle, who moved to Pismo Beach and became a volunteer butterfly informant after 30 years as an Atlantic Richfield Co. accountant in downtown Los Angeles. The more clinical view came from Dennis Frey, a behavioral ecologist and professor of biology at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo. Frey was using what his wife calls his “nuptial tent”--a white, lace-trimmed dome sold to keep flies off picnic food--to corral pairs of Monarchs as they grappled on the ground.

We are here ourselves to hang out, eat and have fun. So we ambled along through the grove’s shady recesses to the adjacent Pismo State Beach North Campground, a thoroughly delightful spot. At a small stream, several families were catching crawfish on strings baited with ham for their home aquariums. Settled among trees between expanses of grass were families having lunch at their campsites. Just over a dune was a broad, clean beach and the sea.

Hungry, we drove back to Pismo’s small downtown, a pleasure for anyone who likes to walk around, poke their heads into antique and variety stores, and eat. The Brad’s Restaurant tri-tip barbecue sandwich, handed out a sidewalk window by the chef, made a savory hors d’oeuvre split three ways. But lunch at Splash--winner in five of the last six years of the Pismo Beach Chamber of Commerce Clam Chowder Cook-Off--was outstanding.

It was well worth the wait in line to get a bread-bowl of chowder ($4.50), a great fresh Ahi sandwich with caper-Dijon mayonnaise ($4.25), and a peppery, wonderful bowl of steamed clams ($4.25). A casual beach joint where most of us ate at counters along the walls, Splash displays letters on its walls from Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines, requesting the Splash chowder recipe.

Pismo Beach cooks know how to use spices, with a lot of emphasis on pepper. That night, we tried the much-recommended M.F. McClintock’s steak house, a short drive to the other side of U.S. 101. Solid rib-eye steaks and pork ribs came with endless bowls of peppery fried potatoes and beans. But the hands-down best use of pepper goes to the Olde Port Inn, at the end of the third pier, Port San Luis, a longer drive through a few miles of green coastal hills north of Pismo Beach.

The Olde Port Inn is what a lot of fish restaurants hope to suggest when they hang old ropes and life rings next to the cash register. The restaurant, built by a commercial fisherman at the port, serves fresh local fish, beautifully cooked, moist and tender. It was easily the best fish, the best food, we had.

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We stayed at the Sandcastle Inn after debating over the less expensive, older cabins of the next-door Clamdigger Motel, where the crew of “The Sheik” had been lodged. Both are right on the beach, but the Sandcastle Inn, a 9-year-old Mediterranean-style building, takes pets and also offers amenities that include phones, a cozy common room with gas fireplace, free continental breakfasts, a hot tub facing the ocean. We could walk directly from the ample patio in front of our room ($117 with the AAA discount) to the sand. The extravagant sunsets went well with an afternoon cocktail. But Saturday afternoon, we pulled on our rubber boots. Another long-standing attraction of Pismo Beach has been the big, delicious clams of the same name. We had heard mixed assessments of our chances of finding any.

Clams were once so numerous that local entrepreneurs used horse-drawn plows to drag them out of the sand. Then for years the beach was clammed out. The clams returned most recently in the early 1990s, in such numbers that one local said her family could hardly stick a fork in the sand without hitting one.

But in 1993, by accounts ranging from those of liquor-store clerks to the local newspapers, the sea otters--recently returned, themselves, to healthy population levels--rediscovered the pismo clam. Some believe the cute little buggers stripped the town’s clam beds overnight. More sober observers think it took a month or two. Now the otters have headed back north, but the clams have yet to return in any quantity. Still, we found several people who had caught their limit--10 of the 4 1/2-inch legal-size clams this year.

We were not so lucky. After hours clumping along the sand at low tide, digging up rocks and searching for telltale bubbles, we didn’t spot a live clam of any dimension. The beach south of Pismo is one of the few places left in California where cars, and horses, are still allowed on the sand. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when the disappointment was compounded as a stylish young Japanese couple, tourists driving a new convertible, raced out to where I was standing.

“Clams? Any clams?” asked the woman as she jumped out. She smiled graciously as she looked up from my empty bucket.

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Budget for Two

Gas: $30.00

Sandcastle Inn, 2 nights: $261.40

Supper, Beachhouse Diner: $25.96

Lunch, Splash: $19.86

Dinner, McClintock’s 57.49

Two drinks, Harry’s: $9.50

Brad’s Restaurant: $3.22

Lunch, Olde Port Inn: $36.73

Saltwater fishing licenses: $30.40

Beach access fee for the car: $4.00

FINAL TAB:: $478.56

Sandcastle Inn, 100 Stimson Ave. at the Beach, Pismo Beach, CA 93449, (800) 822-6606 ; Pismo Beach Chamber of Commerce and Visitor’s Bureau, (800) 443-7778.