The freshening scent of eucalyptus fills your lungs as soon as you reach Pismo Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove (monarchbutterfly.org). Follow the sound of awed murmurs; the craned necks of visitors, gazing into the treetops, are signs of a monarch butterfly sighting.
These orange-and-black beauties fly 10,000ft high and as far as 2000 miles on their annual migrations, guided by the planet’s magnetic pull and the position of the sun. These odysseys lead to balmy overwintering sites along the California coast from Santa Cruz (p000) to San Diego. Pismo is one such place: between November and the end of February, this grove is their temporary home. You might initially mistake them for leaves, until a breeze exposes the orange flash of their wings, or a few of them take off into the skies.
Now for the bad news... The number of migrating monarchs has been creeping down since the 1980s, despite a temporary resurgence in 2021–22, and the butterflies' critical role in pollination has knock-on effects on other wildlife. Pismo locals sounded the alarm in the winter of 2024 when butterfly numbers were counted in the hundreds, when once they would have been thousands. Call or check online with Pismo Beach's visitor information center (experiencepismobeach.com; 805-556-7397) before making a special trip.
