Big Seal Deal

When your romantic entanglement lives in Northern California, and you live in Southern California, you look for spots in between.

There are worse places than the central California coast.

We had reservations at the Cambria Pines Lodge, where we had stayed before. This time, the last weekend in January, we stayed in a cabin; a half-mile trail from the back of the lodge led down the hill to the village.

We also found some good food. Robin’s, where we ate dinner, has an interesting mix of Asian, pasta and meat dishes. But my favorite restaurant was Linn’s, where we ate lunch twice. I’m a fan of chicken pot pie, but I don’t eat meat. Linn’s has the perfect solution--tofu pot pie.

Once in Cambria, you can drive a few miles north and take a Hearst Castle tour, especially timely since today is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Maine, which led to the Spanish-American War. It was William Randolph Hearst who stoked the war, telling one of his photographers, “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.”

As fascinating as it is to walk through Hearst’s home and imagine Cary Grant, Carole Lombard and Harpo Marx swimming in an indoor pool the size of a small lake, or to hear how Hearst imported the ceiling from a 17th century Italian church, the most riveting sight was the thousands of elephant seals lining the nearby beaches.

They are fat--adult males weigh 5,000 pounds and reach 12 to 16 feet long--and ugly, and you can spend hours watching them.

We had seen the seals in mid-October, sunning themselves on the coast north of San Simeon. When we returned three months later, I was humoring Sandi when she suggested we look for them again. I assumed they’d be gone. But as we walked closer to the short bluff overlooking the beach, I was stunned to see twice as many as had been there before. The place was as crowded as Santa Monica beach during a heat wave.

As we moved closer, we realized we had stumbled upon an elephant seal nursery. There was row after row of females, with just a few males on the outskirts. Nearly every female was nursing a pup. We didn’t see any births, but other people there did. The pups looked like black Labrador retrievers, and they yelped like puppies when they wanted their mothers to roll over and give them a nipple. It’s hard to believe something that cute could grow up to be so ugly.

Nearby, the males, whose proboscis gives the animals their names, watched over their harems and tried to mate with the females. Every so often, a smaller male would try to sneak up to a female. Sometimes the alpha male would make a deep croak, almost like a bullfrog, as a warning. Other times he would take off after the intruder, who usually fled down the beach, never into the water.

Once in a while, though, the two would face off, using their long necks to smash into each other like hammers, sending a “thwack” across the beach, until the challenger decided he’d had enough. While we didn’t see any blood drawn, the animals sometimes kill each other.

As they scramble to protect their harems, the bulls will run over anything in their way and crush the pups. Despite their blubber, elephant seals are surprisingly quick. Think Gilbert Brown, the Green Bay Packers’ 370-pound defensive tackle.

The best way to find the seals is to turn off Highway 1 into the second viewing point north of Hearst Castle and walk south. A small sign on the highway points toward “Wildlife Viewing.” If you reach the Piedras Blancas lighthouse, you’ve gone too far.

At Ano Nuevo State Reserve near Santa Cruz, the best-known elephant seal home in the state, during breeding season you’re only allowed to view the animals with a docent. At San Simeon, volunteer docents, from the nonprofit group Bay Net, came on duty for the first time Thanksgiving weekend and are available to answer questions Fridays-Mondays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. They’re easy to spot in their blue windbreakers, usually with binoculars nearby on a tripod.

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The elephant seals first showed up at San Simeon in 1990, probably coming from San Miguel and San Nicolas Islands near Santa Barbara after those spots became too crowded with the animals. “I looked down on the little launch cove at the point and we had about 20 elephant seals,” said Brian Hatfield, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who discovered the animals there. The first pup was born in 1992. Last year 1,200 were born, according to Hatfield, and more births are expected this year.

There were 7,000 seals in this area last year, said Susan McDonald, the docent coordinator.

As the numbers have grown, the population has spread out, just like a city, and one can find other coves filled with seals within a few miles of the viewing turnoff. . Walking to another cove, we encountered a male that had climbed over the bluffs and was sleeping across a trail. We came back the next day. He hadn’t moved.

The time of peak seal population at San Simeon is now. The breeding season begins in December. The males arrive first. The females start to appear a couple of weeks later and give birth six days after showing up. During the four weeks that they nurse, they don’t eat and lose about 45% of their 1,500 pounds. Meanwhile, the pups, who weigh 85 pounds at birth, have gained about 200 pounds feeding on milk that is 50% fat.

Once the pups are weaned, the females head to the Pacific Northwest and are gone by March 8, leaving their pups behind. The males stay two to three weeks longer, then swim to the Aleutian Islands, fattening up on squid, skates, rays and small sharks. The pups stick around for another 2 1/2 months, learning to swim and dive. Then they head out to sea. The seals return to the rookery in July or August for a month to molt and then start the cycle again in December.

Just because there’s no barrier to stop you from getting close to the seals doesn’t mean you should scratch them under the chin like your cat. Signs warn that they are wild animals. We saw one man get too close to a bull, and it chased him several yards down the beach.

But, according to Burney Le Boeuf, an elephant seal expert at the University of California, Santa Cruz, females with pups are the most dangerous, and they can leave a deep bite, often when you turn your back on them. He suggests that puny humans give the seals at least 20 feet of flipper room.

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Budget for Two

Cambria Pines Lodge, 2 nights with breakfast: $185.30

Dinner, Robins: 45.33

Dinner, West End Bar and Grill: 26.58

Two lunches, Linn’s: 39.78.

Hearst Castle: 28.00

Juice Emporium: 9.50

Gas: 25.00

FINAL TAB: $359.49

Cambria Pines Lodge, 2905 Burton Dr., Cambria, CA 93428; telephone (800) 445-6868.