Tour a 70-foot-tall light station makes a worthy detour along Highway One, not only for its history, but for its barking, bellowing neighbors—sofa-size elephant seals.
Constructed in 1874 on a rugged spit and named for the white rocks just offshore, the lighthouse was once the site of other buildings, including a 1906 Victorian-era home that was sold for $1 and moved to nearby Cambria to be converted into a private home. The humble light station wasn’t overlooked by William Randolph Hearst as he designed his nearby castle of land six miles to the south: he had a likeness of the light station added to a crest found above the entrance to the living room inside Casa del Monte, one of his three guest cottages.
Tours of the light station are offered year-round; check the website for details. Next, head south about 2 miles/3 kilometers along the coast—follow your ears to find the right spot. Roughly 17,000 (no, that’s not a typo) elephant seals make up the Piedras Blancas rookery. Northern elephant seals, the world’s second largest type of seal, are named for the males’ proboscis-like snouts; mature males, which can grow to 16 feet/5 meters long and weigh up to 5,000 pounds/2,268 kilos, inflate their snouts to make rumbling bellows during the spring mating season). Their clash-of-the-titans battles in the breakers can be epic.