| Scouting and Scouring
The Central Coast has been one of our favorite places to vacation. We have spent at least a couple of days there for at least the last fifteen years. We started coming for the Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays. A couple of years ago we bought a small, class “C”, motorhome and have spent a week or two at a great RV Park located right on the sand dunes in Morro Bay. You would think that with all this prep work, that finding and settling on a rental would be easy. We were able to narrow things down by eliminating the central city, San Luis Obispo (SLO), because we were attracted by the climate of the towns right on the coast. We dismissed the towns south of SLO as being a little too crowded and appealing to motorized vehicle fans – Pismo Beach has a huge off-road vehicle park based on the sand dunes. We narrowed our choices down to three different towns: Morro Bay, Los Osos, and Cayucos. Morro Bay is the best known and is the historic attraction. Morro Bay features Morro Rock, an extinct volcano. The “Rock” helps form a harbor and an estuary. Morro Bay’s (MB) main industry, besides tourism, is fishing. Fishing is big. Inside the harbor, MB has almost two miles of deep-water shoreline with shops, restaurants, and fishing facilities. Cayucos is just to the north of MB. Cayucos is a town built along a beautiful white-sand, barefoot beach. The town started out as collection of “summer cabins” – small houses built by the owners expressly for a summer family vacation. Most of the original owners lived in Fresno and other San Joaquin Valley towns. The “coast” represented a welcome relief from the heat of the valley during the summer. |
| The original homes were built on small lots, cheaply constructed with little or no forethought given to infrastructure. During the last years, the town has expanded to all the available space with many of the original structures scraped and rebuilt to modern standards. Many of the houses are still restricted to the original lots and infrastructure. Cayucos is, even today, a summer vacation destination with most of the houses limited to short term rentals and vacation homes. Except for a few restaurants, real estate offices and tourist shops, Cayucos residents depend on MB and SLO for shopping.
Los Osos is very interesting. It isn’t much of a tourist town. The town is located south of MB and on the muddy end of the Morro Bay Estuary. Los Osos has some nice views of the bay, the Rock, Hollister Peak and the sand dunes. Los Osos does have the full coastal climate, but its real reason for existence is as a suburb to San Luis Obispo. SLO is the home to California Polytechnic State University, Cal-Poly. Many of the faculty and staff of Cal-Poly have built their homes here. A newer junior college, Cuesta College has been added to SLO during the last couple of years, increasing the academic foundation of Los Osos. Parts of Los Osos have an eclectic, almost hippy feel to it. |
| Los Osos has received a great deal of attention in the last couple of years because of its shortcomings regarding its infrastructure, mainly the sewer system. Most Los Osos homes are on septic tanks and the State has intervened to force the construction of an approved sewer system.
In our search for suitable accommodations in the newspaper and on the Internet, we found that almost all of the rentals in Cayucos are listed under short-term “Vacation Rentals” while Los Osos has almost no vacation accommodations. Morro Bay is a compromise between the two and lists both short term and lease rentals. Vacation rentals, by their very nature, are more expensive than the longer leases. All three cities add an occupancy tax of about 10% to any rental fewer than 30 days. Most vacation rentals also include the utilities in the rental fee and have a higher base rate to cover the lower occupancy rate. During our search, with the downturn in the economy, vacation rentals were expected to be restricted to the ten-weeks of summer and the major holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter break). Our first requirement was for a rental within the costal climate. Running a close second, and not absolutely necessary, was a view of the water. We went down for a couple of days and stayed at a motel in Morro Bay (there are lots of motels in Morro Bay), while we looked over the available housing. The problem we ran into was that the houses that Nancy found most attractive were usually listed as “Vacation Rentals” and we were looking for something that was extended. Nancy negotiated with some of the “vacation rentals” for a lower rate for a extended lease and had some success. |
| We picked a good time of year to be going into this market because we were at the end of the summer and with a weak economy, it gave us a strong position. We wanted something with at least two bedrooms, two baths and a space that Nancy could use as a studio. We looked at about 10-15 units before we picked this one.
I wasn’t surprised that we ended up in a unit stairs. Because of the views, everyone is trying to get as high a possible to see more. I wasn’t taken by surprise that we ended with a great view of the Rock, harbor and ocean. But I must confess that Nancy’s choice of a rental in the middle of town wasn’t what I expected. Morro Bay isn’t very big, a little over 10,000 people, with the downtown covering an area of about ten blocks square. Our flat is within five city blocks of just about everything. Our flat is two bedrooms, two and one-half baths, an office that Nancy has set up as a studio, and a large two-car garage. We are within a gated community of fourteen units. The unit has a great view, is quite well finished and even has a gas fireplace. I think we’re going to be quite comfortable here. |
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| The Beach at Cayucos Cayucos is a small costal village just north of Morro Bay on the California coast. Features barefoot sand beaches. |
| A view from Los Osos Los Osos is located on the south end of Morro Bay |
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| The Town and environment of Morro Bay as viewed from the top of Black Hill |
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