Letters From The Loft
Stuff From The Desk Of Chuck Thornton
To kill some more time before checking into our room, we took a drive out to Morro Rock.
Morro Bay is an active fishing village and offers plenty for visitors, but even if there wasn't a local McDonald's with fresh Diet Dr. Pepper, people would still come to see The Rock:
To the right at the base, if you squint, there's a building there that adds some scale and gives you an idea of the size of this lump of stone sitting out in the bay. At any scenic lookout point in Morro Bay, there's a poster or plaque providing the origins of this rock, but I never saw anybody reading it. No one really thinks there's a fascinating story behind a big hunk of rock like this... they know it wasn't airlifted into the bay by the Army Corps of Engineers, and what they're going to read will have words like "volcanic" and "upheaval" and "eons", and only tell them what they already knew: big rocks like this come out of the ground, and they're cool to look at.
There's a stretch of land leading from the shore to the rock that also marks the north end of the bay, so we were able to drive out to a parking area right at the base of the rock, where I was able to point my camera straight up and take more mineral-themed pictures that I won't subject you to.
The public's not allowed to actually set foot on Morro Rock, ostensibly because it's a protected sanctuary for the peregrine falcon. But really, it's to protect visitors from what would be a steady hailstorm of would-be rock-conquerors, and to spare the city from cranking out coroner's reports with cause of death listed as "because it's there."
There's also a rocky spit jutting out to the left of the rock that serves as a breakwater to the bay:
It's look like an exciting place to explore, but the spoilsport authorities don't allow the public out there either. Obviously, that didn't stop the guys in this picture. They must not have seen this sign:
The sign's not really clear on what the danger is, but it's obvious by its condition that if the rocks don't get you, the birds will.
After spending some time discussing how great God is at making rocks, Sue and I decided to see if we could check into our hotel room.