Hikefest Day 1. Each November, we spend the ten or so days before Thanksgiving at our trailer in Pismo Beach, and this particular visit we decided to spend the majority of our time hiking (what we call today the “hikefest”). We had bought a couple of books on hikes in the Central Coast area, and Monday afternoon of that week found us driving out to Los Osos and looking for something appealing. Of the chain of morros (the line of volcanic hills that runs from Morro Rock at Morro Bay eastward to Islay Hill near San Luis Obispo), several are accessible to the public, and the most prominent one in the Morro Bay area is 911′ Cerro Cabrillo. We found the trailhead easily enough near the marshes along the eastern edge of the bay and paused to review the various signs posted there. This is apparently mountain lion habitat, although we saw no animal life whatsoever except for some dogs out for a run with their masters. The trail ascends gradually as it tracks through a shallow valley to the east, eventually reaching an intersection where we turned left (north) toward the summit. As we climbed up the steep and slippery trail, the aptly-named Tiki Rock stared at us from its perch on the hillside – it looks similar to the statues on Easter Island. The trail reaches a saddle and abruptly turns left to mount a steeper and rockier ridgeline. Here, the higher we climbed, the more poison oak we encountered, eventually having to climb rock-to-rock to avoid it. The views from the top were stunning, with Morro Bay stretching away to the south and the coastline up toward Cayucos to the northwest. After soaking all this in for a while, we scrambled back down to the easy trail and retraced our steps to the car. Chris had forgotten to set the GPS and our camera was dead as well, so we have no mapped track and only BlackBerry photos.