Kayaking tours are common for the Central Coast, but one experience breaks up exploring Morro Bay waters with picnic lunches and dinners.
“I don’t know anyone else who does it actually,” Central Coast Outdoors co-owner Virginia Flaherty said. “When we decided to start this company, it just was kind of a natural part of thinking like, oh, you put out a nice big lunch spread or whatever in the middle of the day. It just evolved, I think, from our history of doing this as tour guides.”
Flaherty and her husband, John, began as tour guides in 1991 for their bike touring company called Backroads. Lunch was always a staple in the middle of a bike excursion every day. Lunch became dinner as the Flahertys offered local beer, wines, cheese, and crackers during what they called sunset pedals.
After 13 years, Backroads made way for Central Coast Outdoors where the Flahertys now provide guided tours on Morro Bay, capping them off deliciously if clients opt for the “Dinner on the Dunes” or the classic kayak tour with private lunch packages.
The lunch trips last between four and four-and-a-half hours while the dinner trips are roughly an hour shorter because they’re based around the sunset.
Typically, kayakers can enjoy a lentil couscous salad; a pear, walnut, and blue cheese green salad; sliced fresh bagels or bread; smoked wild salmon; roasted turkey breast; sliced tomatoes; Dijon mustard; cookies or brownies; soda; juice; and locally produced beer and wine during the picnics. Vegetarians can request to add carrots and hummus, while PB&J, string cheese, yellow mustard, and apples can be requested for kids.
Flaherty calls the fare “California style,” and the menu and the tours are popular enough to gain a winery partnership.
“We do a big trip every fall for a winery in Paso Robles called Lone Madrone. They do it as a kind of as a perk for their wine club members,” she said. “They come out with us. We serve all the food on that trip. They bring out their own wines.”
Prices for both lunch and dinner trips are the same, with people in groups getting the most bang for their buck. Picnic tours are $165 for two people, $150 for three, $140 for four, $130 for five to six, $120 for seven to 11, and $100 for 12 or more people.
For tours less than 12 people, kids between 5 and 12 years get a 20 percent discount, while 2- to 4-year-olds are 50 percent off.
A guide-naturalist accompanies kayakers as they head out on to the bay looking for wildlife like sea otters and birds. Eventually, the group will work its way across the bay to Sandspit Beach, where everyone can hop out and explore the dunes that protect the bay from the ocean while the guide prepares lunch or dinner.
“It’s like there’s nobody else out on the bay, and you’ve got this place yourself, and the sun is setting,” Flaherty said. “It’s just this beautiful experience.”
The tour also provides people with kayaks, life jackets, paddles, a waterproof fleece-lined lap blanket, water, and granola bars. Summer and fall are the best times for the tours, with less chance of winds.
“By the time you’re finished with it, and you leave the docks, it’s pretty much dark at that point,” Flaherty said. “It’s a great place to be at night, on the bay, because you hear all the wildlife and the birds. Everything is still active, but it’s a whole different environment than you’d see or experience during the daytime.”
Book a tour
To make a reservation with Central Coast Outdoors, call (805) 528-1080 or submit a private tour request form available at centralcoastoutdoors.com.
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Get Outside – Summer/Fall 2025
This article appears in Get Outside – Summer/Fall 2025.