What I love about this is your walking out on a lake amongst the birds and looking toward very tall sand dunes. You can also see the mist. Pretty cool! Oso Flaco means "skinny bear"ever since 1769 when Gaspar de Portola's expedition passed through. The reason for this is attributed to a fateful meal shared by the explorers. The group saw, shot and subsequently ate a skinny bear they had seen on the shores of the lake. By the next day, several of the men had died. The tale goes that the native people, the Chumash, had fed the bear tainted meat which when consumed would cause the animals to sicken enough for them to be unable to compete for resources. With the inability to feed came the inevitable wasting that would have led to our 'skinny bear'. It would appear though that the bear's flesh had enough residual toxins to have also dispatched our ill fated explorers to a quicker demise.