It had been well over a decade since I found myself on the rugged Big Sur coast and I had not been to Pinnacles since it had become a national park in 2013. I knew time, people, and societal evolution towards online social promotion would only degrade the experience. It has that dangerously approachable distance for a weekend getaway to San Francisco and Los Angeles and the easy appeal of roadside photo ops. Invasive pompas grass seemed to be spreading with the efficiency of wildfire along the coast, a new development. We struggled to find state park campsites both nights despite planning months in advance. Some private campsites were well over a hundred dollars per night.
We set off as early as we could, finding a tasty posh cafe in Camarillo to fuel us with breakfast. By the time we past through Goleta we were both finding a need to stretch our legs and so we opted for a short uphill hike to Gaviota Hot Springs. This was a nice little trip down memory lane for me and I enjoyed the greenery, sycamores, and oaks along the way. The main spring pool was much as I remembered it (including the warm but wish it was warmer temperatures) although surely scooped out wider and some bigger palm trees. The lower pool still had the milky blue color I remembered (and even cooler temperature), but seemed to be much smaller in size. We dipped our feet in for a few minutes and called it good, with so much more to see and do with our day.
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| Gaviota Hot (warm) Springs |
Onward we drove through oaks draped with lace lichen and the Santa Barbara wine country. We detoured off the highway to the pier at the end of Avila Beach to have a look at the neat pillow basalts in the coastal cliffs. Despite the February day there was a surprising number of kids playing in the surf on the beach.
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| Avila Beach pillow basalts |
We drove straight on past San Luis Obispo and detoured yet again to Morro Rock, the seaside dacite monolith. Here too there were lots of people out and about, enjoying a midday break or starting their holiday weekend early like us.
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| Morro Rock |
Next was the obligatory stop to see the elephant seals in San Simeon. Pups nursing, raised chest head-bump face-offs, and bouncing blubber runs down the beach. We didn't stay long but long enough to enjoy some of the antics.
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| San Simeon elephant seals |
We then entered the cliff hugging meandering section of PCH, weaving in and out of valley mouths and traversing various landslides. We made a few of the classic roadside stops near Big Creek, Bixby Creek, and McWay Creek. It was sunny if crisp. The roads and stops were busy but nothing like they would be the following day we guessed.
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| Big Creek Bridge |
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| Bixby Creek Bridge |
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| McWay Falls |
As the day got on Heather mentioned wanting to actually step foot on a beach and I agreed. We drove down the one-lane side road to Pfeiffer Beach, which despite being yet another place to pay to access, was an exceptionally nice beach with sand dunes, sweeping coves, cliffs, seastacks, and caves. This was the only place we went on the coast that I had not already been and was an easy highlight for me. It was particularly cold as we walked barefoot on the wet sand as the sun lowered; I did my best to explore the beach and snap photos before the light left. We found pockets of red sand related to some of the sheared ophiolitic rocks being eroded and walked the length of the beach. I had spotted a tenuous and not obvious to most way up the main prominent seastack formation and without drawing too much attention climbed up. Here I got to see a neat clifftop garden of over a dozen native (and non-native) plants including some nice succulents, and a commanding view over the entire beach. Particularly neat were the fascinatingly intricate tafoni weathering of the fractured sandstone.
We stayed at Pfeiffer Beach until sunset then drove on to our spot in Pfeiffer Burns Big Sur State Park nearby. Despite being fully booked online, we found the campground less than half full and pleasantly quiet once our neighbor turned their generator off. In the morning we packed up and went for a short walk towards the Big Sur River gorge. Once wading was in store we headed back through the redwoods and set back off on the road heading north.
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| Big Sur River |
We drove the rest of the coast, now thoroughly busy with holiday weekend traffic. We decided to skip past Point Lobos (BUSY) to Cannery Row and then backtrack a little before sunset. Monterey was an epic struggle to find parking and the illogical one-way streets and no back turns ensured I made a loop and a half around before we found some parking up a hill but close enough to where we wanted to get. We checked out the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which was more polished but perhaps smaller than I remember. We saw lots of neat things but the "flamboyant cuttlefish" won the day. We strolled through Cannery Row, found some thai food, then drove to Point Lobos. Frustratingly the last entry was at 4:30pm and everyone was required to exit at 5pm- ridiculously early! We were the second to last car allowed entry and tried to make the most of the short half hour by walking the coastal trails near the south end of the park. I think other times I had been here the waves were larger and perhaps the weather more raw, but still the granite coast had some scenic wonders.
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| China Cove |
At the loudspeaker of a trucked ranger we exited the park, stocked up at a nearby grocery store, and drove east on backroads and then a windy mountain road to Oak Point Campground in Fremont Peak SP, the only campsite we were able to reserve within a reasonable distance of Pinnacles NP. Though dark when we arrived and dark when we left in the morning it seemed a nice enough spot beneath oak trees with the distant city light below us. Once again the fellow campers were respectfully quiet and it was calm and peaceful apart from the occasional owls.
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