Human visitors watch the butterfly ones recently at the monarch grove in Pismo Beach. The butterflies come here to mate and keep warm. The Central Valley tourists come here to, well, do the same.
They flock to Pismo Beach, hanging together in clusters, adding their distinctive color to the beach town.
The migration has gone on for generations.
In the case of the monarch butterflies, it begins in December and runs through the end February.
With Central Valley visitors, there are year-round sightings.
But their numbers begin building in February, with its two holiday weekends and glimpses of spring weather, and culminate with grand colonies by summer.
Monarch butterfly larvae eat enough milkweed to increase their weight 2,700 times in just two weeks.
Valley folks head to the town they consider Central-California-by- the-Coast and eat about 10 kettles of clam chowder a day (as a group, not per person) at Splash Cafe on Pomeroy Avenue. There are no reliable statistics on how much their weight increases.
Scientists aren’t sure why Pismo is home to one of the largest monarch groves in the U. S. Pismo butterfly buffs say the monarchs east of the Rocky Mountains winter in Mexico and those west of the Rockies migrate to Central and Southern California.
They end up decorating eucalyptus trees from San Francisco to San Diego; one of the largest butterfly parties is in Pismo Beach.
The reasons Valley tourists end up in Pismo are, perhaps, clearer. Pismo advertises a beach you can drive on. There are nearby sand dunes for off-road vehicles and many campgrounds. The town’s welcome sign is a giant, concrete clam statue. The name “Pismo” is Chumash Indian for “tar.”
For a certain type of ATVowning Valley dweller, Pismo is a match as natural as sand and surf.
“There’s definitely a connection,” said Melissa Hennagan, 30, a butterfly viewer from Bakersfield. “All my friends with fifth-wheelers and trailers come. My family had quads, and we were always on the Dunes. Everybody from the Valley comes here, gets married here, vacations here.”
John Stilwell, a docent at the Pismo Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove, explains the marvels of the monarch migrations.
The butterflies come here to mate and winter through February. These winter butterflies are
blessed with longer life spans than those living in the summer. It takes generations of summer butterflies, living about six weeks each, traveling and laying eggs before they die, to get back up north in relay fashion.
Then, somehow, a fifth or sixth generation finds its way to this Pismo eucalyptus grove.
Valley folks tend to send each succeeding generation to Pismo to mate and winter and look at monarchs.
“Everybody comes here, and they’re all happy to see the butterflies,” Stilwell said. “Last week, we had 30 Hell’s Angels and they were all saying, ‘Wow, butterflies. They’re so beautiful.’
“You can kinda tell the Valley people. They have ATVs in their pickup trucks when they come to see the butterflies.”
An economic force
All those pickups routinely heading south on Highway 41 bring money to Pismo Beach. More than a third of the $14 million in revenues that support the general fund of Pismo’s budget is from tourism. The town of 8,500 has 2,000 hotel rooms and draws about 800,000 visitors a year.
George Edes, Pismo Beach’s finance director, said finance guys have to be careful about making generalizations, and he doesn’t have hard numbers to show how much of that money comes from the Valley.
But, “there’s no doubt the Central Valley is one of the greatest contributors to our economy,” he said. “There’s a lot of ‘coming over.’
“It goes beyond tourism. People from the Valley are here for Portuguese Days, they belong to the Moose Lodge, their grandmother owned a cottage here. The ties are cultural. This is really a long-term relationship. Viva la friendship.”
As beach towns go, Pismo Beach is more kitschy than ritzy. Valley style has long paid homage to agricultural roots. Both places pride themselves on not putting on airs.
‘Fresnicks’ and ‘Bakos’
Still, like naturalists taking notes on monarchs, Pismo Beach residents make observations on the habits of Valley visitors — or “Fresnicks” and “Bakos,” as they call them.
“All the Valley people are pretty much the same: big, big trucks. They wear shoes on the beach,” said Claudia Bailey, a 21-year-old server at Mo’s Smokehouse BBQ. “They’re awesome people. They’re excited to be here. … They’re pretty much all we see.”
At California Coast Candy, with its bins of saltwater taffy, J. R. Garcia, 19, waited on about 10 people on a February day. He said they were all from the Valley: “You can just tell.”
“Valley people are more straight to the point,” he said. “And they wear Ugg boots with short skirts. It’s like tourists wearing board shorts in Hawaii.”
Co-worker Casi Cunningham, 20, chimed in: “They drive big lifted trucks. The women have bleached blond hair and gnarly blue eye shadow. They wear matching sweats outfits.”
The next customer in the door is Rochelle Baldwin, 29, of Clovis. She’s been coming to Pismo all her life; now she and her husband are bringing their children.
She has blond hair, most likely shades lighter than that produced by a weekend at the beach, a turquoise track suit and eye shadow.
“This is turquoise,” she said good-naturedly about her makeup. “But I do usually wear blue-blue.”
For Baldwin, Pismo Beach is part of growing up in the Valley: “Everybody always comes here. We stay on the Dunes, ride motorcycles and ATVs and look for seashells.”
And like the butterflies that somehow find their way to Pismo without having been there, newcomers to the Valley soon join the migrational pull that started before them.
Albert and Anita Vevasis—a couple watching orange butterflies flutter through gray-green eucalyptus leaves—moved to Sanger from the East Coast four years ago.
“Everyone told us that people from the Valley go to Pismo,” said Albert, 64.
“They told us about a couple of hotels and about the butterflies and that we had to go for a weekend and get clam chow-der at the Splash Cafe,” said Anita, 60.
“They said Pismo Beach is part of living in the Valley.”
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