Back in July, Melanie and I went on an awesome camping trip with Marc to Montana De Oro State Park, near San Luis Obispo, CA. The park has a normal campground, but we opted for one of the “environmental” campsites. Instead of being packed together in a typical campground loop, the four environmental sites are spread throughout the park. Our particular site involved parking at the bottom of a hill and hiking 1/2 mile up a dirt road. Once there the site had a very clean pit toilet, a nice picnic table, and plenty of space to spread out. It also had a sweeping 360-degree view of the ocean and surrounding hills. Notably absent from the view were other people; unless you were looking through binoculars, you couldn’t see anyone else. We literally had a whole hill to ourselves. It was wonderful!

We camped for two nights, spending a lot of time soaking in the view and enjoying nature. We also went for a great hike along the coast on land owned by PG&E for the adjacent Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. (Pleasant name, eh?) The PG&E folks were very nice; they simply asked that we signed in and out and agreed to stay on the trail unless we wanted to get shot at. Sounds like a good deal to me! The rugged coastline is amazingly beautiful. None of my pictures do justice to the place, which really must be experienced in person.

We also found time to entertain ourselves with kites. See the photo gallery for a play-by-play account. While we mainly fed on the mountain of food we packed up the hill from our cars, we also headed over to Los Osos for a great burger at a little place called Sylvester’s. If you like a good burger and are in the area, you’ll love this place.

Overall the trip was a blast; I came home wishing I could spend more time out in nature enjoying the beauty of it all. It also renewed my interest in backpacking; I’d really like to do a big backpacking trip one of these days. I think it would be a great experience.

Click on the picture above for the full gallery.