San Simeon State Park

Monday October 21

We made it out of the Big Sur area and expected to find some grocery stores to restock our food.  Alas, none.  Small towns have terrible shop hours, and the stores that are open have premium pricing.  Dam!  We should've stopped at the Hearst Castle (largest private collection of art) but didn't largel due to the urgency of finding food for dinner and getting to the next campground.
I found more prickly pears! My strategy for them now includes rubber dish washing gloves, a big paper bag, and a specially designated knife that we found on the road and cleaned up (the road giveth, the road taketh away - but mostly giveth). I harvested probably 40 pears.  They are more colourful than the last ones and VERY sweet.  Figured out how to cut them and serve them without burning the spines off first.  Erin got 2 splinters on her tongue.  Oh dear.  It is an interesting proposition pulling needles from someone's tongue.  Good thing we have tweezers!

I managed to cobble together another meal with some expensive corner store groceries, the pears, the black bean flakes, and the last of our pasta.  Erin is still hungry.  She seems to be eating a lot lately.  As soon as we get to a real grocery store, I will feed her right back up!  Racoons, herons, moles, gophers, condors, hawks all were largely featured.  Also, we went right by the ELEPHANT SEAL beaches and heard them belching  challenges at  eachother.  We've been setting up the tent without the fly on to keep the condensation down and simplify things.  Ideally under a tree to minimize condensation.  Set it up under some kind of maple tree (except the leaves feel thick and fuzzy) and pill bigs were crawling all over it and our stuff all night.  Gross. Actually, we were pulling bugs out of our stuff for days.

Left out the husks of our prickly pears for the racoons.  Hope those bastards regretted raiding humanity at least for one night.

the little creek we bathed in at Kirk Creek - knee deep, and a bit chilly