Every year thousands of monarch butterflies travel from the Rocky Mountains to Natural Bridges State Beach to spend the winter in the park’s Monarch Grove where they feast on eucalyptus trees. Just to put the distance that these butterflies cover on their treck, it’s about 800 miles from the Rocky Mountains to Natural Bridges State Beach. Crazy, right?!
This weekend we decided to visit Natural Bridges State Beach.
It seemed like a good time to go because the monarch butterflies usually start arriving at Natural Bridges sometime around mid-October and tend to be gone by mid-February. The best time to go see them is anywhere from late October through November.
We should up in time for a free 1-hour monarch talk and habitat walk.
During monarch season the park offers a free educational talk and a tour on Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m. I learned so much during the talk. Not only about the life stages of the butterfly, but also about the five generations of monarch butterflies that go through the yearly cycle of migration. It’s pretty mind-blowing, actually.
After the talk, we went looking for monarchs.
There’s a beautiful grove where the monarchs congregate and you can observe them from a deck-like area.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see tons of monarchs.
I mean, we definitely saw a lot of monarch butterflies but not enough for me to be able to capture a decent picture of them with my iPhone. If you look at the picture above, that dark winged shape in the sky is a beautiful monarch.
We are going to try and make the hour and a half-ish trip from our home in San Francisco to Natural Bridges again later in November and hopefully, we’ll get to see more of them clustered together for warmth on the eucalyptus trees.
Monarch Butterflies at Natural Bridges State Beach
2531 W Cliff Dr
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
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