Arroyo Grande: Thanksgiving and Monarch Butterfly Grove

Day 86 of Family Nomad Life:

It's been five days since we returned to California. The jetlag gets a little better everyday, with the family consistently waking up between 5-7am. This week, the little one and I caught small colds, most likely from the dry airplane ride and fatigue of traveling, but other than that the family is doing fine. We're starting to venture out more to explore this sleepy town we're residing in. Verdict? Surprisingly, Arroyo Grande has a lot to offer, especially for young families! Most of out time in California has been spent living in San Diego and Santa Barbara Counties, San Luis Obispo for us has only been a weekend getaway until now. Before deciding on our next permanent move, sometime in the next few months, we decided we will take our time and stick around SLO county. Still one would normally hear about San Luis Obispo City, Morro Bay, Pismo Beach, even Cambria, but I've rarely heard anyone mention Arroyo Grande. I think we may have stumbled across a little gem, and surrounding "villages" like Grover Beach and Oceano are worth visiting too.

Thanksgiving

The first week of our return, Thanksgiving was just around the corner. We had only 4 days to prepare and think about what we wanted to do (certainly NOT jump on a plane to spend the holidays with loved ones!), we were gonna do this solo. Not being major turkey fans (or ham) we decided to cook duck for our family holiday dinner, the first I've ever done this!

Hubby of course did the honors of carving the duck, a family tradition as head of the household. After hearing horror stories of duck being "too tough" or "rubbery" due to its muscle and fat content, I'm proud to say it came out beautifully. The duck was stuffed [spilling out both ends, I might add!], the meat was tender, the fat well-seasoned, we even forgot to apply the cranberry sauce. The stuffing inside the duck was flavored with duck fat, and cooked inside beautifully.

Since going to France, Baby G has developed a love for eating duck. When she saw the bird emerge from the oven she kept screaming "duck, duck duck!" from her highchair. We were all ready to eat our adventurous dinner, complete with prayer and heated gluhwein (I like to take this time to give a shout out to Aldi grocery. Where would we be without you?). It was a long day, and took about 8 hours of prepping and cooking. In the end, we declared this [rushed] Thanksgiving dinner a roaring success.

Monarch Butterfly Grove

As hubby has the day off, we decided to go on a family hike. California being what it is, there are PLENTY of hiking trials near and far... like at all times. One of the trails on my AllTrails app is called the Monarch Butterfly Grove. It dawned on me that November is the season for the Monarch Butterfly Migration. We have seen the remnants of the migration in Santa Barbara, but never in its full glory.

The trial leads to a boardwalk towards the beach

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure how to explain this trail. It's a place where forest meets boardwalks, meets dunes, meets beach; you started the trail and have one idea about it, but tby the end ask yourself 'how did I get up here?'. The scenery changes that fast, it's like three parks and a beach rolled into one. Oh, and it's also an RV campsite. There were a lot of people there but we still didn't find any trouble with parking. Arroyo Gtrande seems to be a a town where even if it becomes crowded, it's never that bad... you will always find parking (November is arguably the best time for travel). Right in the beginning of the trailhead, you're greeted with a forest of eucalytus trees and it smells wonderful [my irritated sinuses were pleased, at least]. At the beginning of the trail there's a little grove of eucalyptus trees, and lo and behold, there were the butterflies.

I have seemed this sight "Butterfly Chandelier"

Flying, swooping, gliding, and elegant. I had only seen these types of butterflies groups in photos, but when the butterflies find a place they like to land [and...i don't know... comtemplate life together?] they form these long chains that hang from the branches. I dubbed this performance the "chandeliering", because they looked like long butterfly chandeliers. Whereas hubby and I were ooooo-ing and awe-ing, Baby G seemed at first intrigued by the little flying wonders, but then quickly became bored and wandered around the grove [and crowds of people]. Thus was our queue to leave and continue our hike.

The trail turns into a boardwalk, leading to Pismo Beach

The hike in its entirety was about two miles (out and back). After leaving the butterfly grove we encountered the RV campsite, and right beside it the boardwalk to continue our walk. There were benches here and there as well as openings in the wooden fencing, welcoming passerbys to walk around the sand dunes steadily appearing. Being a California nature park, I a bit surprised about this as I thought the state wouldn't normally allow people to enter these sorts of habitats for environmental reasons. Then again, AG is still a smallish town with probably not as much foot traffic as other parks; and I suppose sand dunes tend to be more welcoming for campers and the like.

At the end of the trail you find Pismo Beach

The further we walked away from the ecalyptus forest, the more prevalant a beachy scene became and we saw rolling hills covered with ice plants. It being autumn, the succulents were changing color and displayed a brilliant reddish hue against the normal greenery, there were even some flowers present (marveloud whites, purples, and pinks). In my experience, it can be tricky for California to feel like fall due to lack of color changes, but you could certainly feel it here.

We somehow ended up at the beach. Looking at the map, we walked parallel to the beach which was just beyond the dunes. In fact, you could take the boardwalk to the beach opening, and then walk along the beach back to the eucalyptus forest. This exactly what we did, albeit we took our time and walked along the wet sand searching for giant pismo clams (which were absoluetly everywhere!). Baby G really enjoyed this activity, either falling behind of wandering around, picking up any shell or rock she fancied [and then putting them in her mouth, and spitting out sand]. She was so fascinated by the different shells, colors, and textures (smooth clam shells, rough sand dollers, fluffy sand).

All in all, the beach was a great way to end the hike, all I could think was how much I missed California and didn't even realize it until then; with all the moving around and travel, I got caught up in the momentum and didn't think much about what we left behind. We're just happy we were able to have this special day, the family was totally on the same wavelength in that moment. One last remark before ending this post, I'm starting to get back into jogging (it's sometimes hard to find the time and place to exercise, especially with a little one), but AG and the neighborhood we're staying in makes it too easy. Besides, Baby G seems to like stroller jogging with me! I think I would like to return to Monarch Grove to do this.

Keeping up with Daddy on the Trail

Ciao ciao!