IF YOU'RE AN AVOWED CENTRAL-COASTIE, as in a person who makes the regular effort to call upon some of California's most sublime shoreline, as well as the towns, villages, and wild places that aren't right at the water, but nicely nearby, then you know how it is to hook fully into a particular place or two. Maybe you're all about Pismo Beach, which is 100% understandable, or perhaps you're an avid Avila Beach aficionado, or you could be the traveler who has to see Cayucos at least twice a year (as you spend the rest of the calendar dreaming about those tide pools and sunsets). This is all amazing, this loyalty to location, and asking any adventurer to rain-check a destination that must be seen again and again would not be a question anyone would seek to ponder. But, dear Central-Coasties, if you're road-tripping this spring, or mapping out your summer spins, have you dune, we mean done, enough? Oh, hang on, we did actually mean "dune" there, for we're about to love upon...
GUADALUPE-NIPOMO DUNES CENTER, the hub of local hikes, flora information, fauna information, and more in the area. There's also the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area, if you need more dunes-y delights in your world, but this spectacular stretch of the Highway 1 Discovery Route has more pleasures beyond its splendid sand formations. There's the Luffa Farm, the Historic Dana Adobe, Oso Flaco Lake Natural Area and Bird Watching, Oceano Historic Depot Railroad Museum, and several more must-sees in a notably not-too-vast area. True, the Central Coast, as a whole, is rather lengthy, and thank goodness for that, for it means there's usually more for us to explore. And if you've got to go Pismo, or Cayucos, or Morro Bay, or SLO, make time for some dunes-based memory-making, right in this highly explorable corner of California.
