I took the risk and brought the DSLR with me (in baggies none the less) and before we knew it the seals found us, posing for pictures! The harbour seals, sea lions, and sea otters all hang out together on a peninsula near the wharfs and the kayakers definitely pique their curiosity. We had shadows for most of the trip, but took care not to get too close a we didn’t want that huge fine for interacting with them. (but that didn’t stop the critters from checking us out)

We worked our way towards the aquarium where there is a nice kelp forest. The water was a spectacular deep green, and the kelp flowed with the currents in hypnotic waves. We took some time to enjoy the view, the fresh air, and give our muscles a break from working our way out against the wind.

Eventually the breeze started to chill us so we made our way back, with no spills and cameras still dry.

Fisherman’s wharf was calling (Chowder, chowder, chowder! come eat me!) and so we did. After a few tastings we decided to get a bread bowl and warm up on a couch with its own fireplace. After exploring the wharf a bit more we determined we didn’t have enough time for both the aquarium and Point Lobos, so we decided to hit the point… those jellies are coming to chicago so i wasn’t too disappointed.

After a short drive and parking scuffle, we were hiking out to the beautiful points of Point Lobos. Once again the water is just a beautiful deep blue, crashing into the cliffs.

The famous cyprus trees surrounded us… taking our time we walked the loop stopping so many times to enjoy the views.

I found some paintbrush wildflowers (orange!) and enjoyed snapping pics as i saw them. On our way back the light was shining just wonderfully through the trees and it felt almost like Middle Earth… the trees weren’t talking to me, but with a bit of imagination the ents would have said, sit down and stay… don’t rush!

After a fun afternoon of hiking we decided to try to drive the 17 mile drive, but then detoured when we realized you had to pay and realized the houses in the area were awesome anyways… there were some crazy roofs (wavy!) and just some cute rock homes, very gingerbready…

We made our way home, fixed some yummy food, and finished the night watching a movie all cuddling together on the couch.

Time to head home

So my last day of my trip we decided to head back to San Fran/Oakland after a leisurely breakfast. We made good time and stopped in to grab Mariana’s ID, as it was the Peruvian voting day. We made our way downtown and realized there are a LOT of peruvians in San Fran! We dropped her off to get in line to vote and went off to try to find parking… after much circling we realized there were too many voters and opted to head a bit more west and found a great ramen place. YUM!

We were just heading back when we heard voting had been completed, and Mariana had a plan… crazy ice cream at Humphry Slocombe. And when i say crazy, i mean crazy… Salt & Pepper? yep. Foie Gras? Yep (but not that day), honey thyme, jesus juice, corn… it goes on.. You can taste any of them and they ran out quickly of the best flavors (salt and pepper wasn’t one of them) but i ended up getting Secret Breakfast… corn flakes and bourbon! WTF? oddly good, even though i’m not a bourbon fan!

a perfect end to my trip, a fun city day with basically no pictures haha! Thanks to both Geoff and mariana for a wonderful finale!

With a bit more sleep i was ready for my day to begin, so i started working my way up the coast yet again. I noticed a nice little waterfall just a few miles to the north and did a quick stop, but after McWay it didn’t really compare so I didn’t stay long. With the weird weather (some rain, some sun) I was glad I’d made all my stops the day before and quickly made my way to Pfeiffer Beach.

Now I’ve read over and over how hard it was to find the access to this beach, but honestly I don’t get what all the fuss is about. So it doesn’t scream BEACH ACCESS HERE! off of Rt 1, but if you have a vague idea of where it should be its super easy, and even better it has a huge yellow sign saying “windy road, no trailers”… AND they give the exact mile marker. If you can’t find it, great! you probably shouldn’t be there if you can’t follow any of those instructions

The drive down to the beach definitely keeps you on your toes. It is mostly a 1 lane very windy road with some pretty blind corners. It reminded me a lot of JDC roads, but more fun. I got a little too excited and had to remind myself i wasn’t back home and did need to pay attention so I didn’t get into any nasty accidents. And the grand finale of the drive is crossing a small stream, which in my little economy car was only slightly concerning… I have to admit it was a bit fun splashing through it!

So there are 2 things about Pfeiffer Beach that i wanted to see… the most widely known draw is the “Window to the World” rock… It has a pretty big, fairly square hole in the center of this massive rock right off the beach. On certain days of the year when the timing is right and the sun/clouds play friendly rays of light will shine through making an intense ray of light and it’s a sight to see. (Today was not that day).

The second thing about the beach is that it has purple sand, yes that’s right purple. While the whole beach isn’t purple you can see some pretty cool designs where the purple meets up with the normal sand. My morning visit had to do with trying to catch the cool designs in the sand before too many people trampled it. I lucked out and with the rainy random weather, and it being mid-week, I got some really cool designs with no tracks anywhere near them.

It had started raining a bit harder so I decided that would be a great time to go explore Big Sur State Park nearby, thinking the dreary weather might actually be an advantage. But by the time i got there and started my hike it got wonderfully sunny and warm, oddly not want i wanted. But i was there and was looking forward to doing a light hike and made my way up to Pfeiffer falls. The light wasn’t great but i enjoyed a snack, hung out with the family of a photographer who was off trying to get the perfect shot (not sure if he got anything worth bushwhacking for) and just took in the huge redwoods near the base of the falls. I love the wonderfully tall trees, so majestic…reminds you how small you are when you see them.

After my hike back I couldn’t decide what to do, more hiking or check out Nepenthe? I voted for food, its a bad habit but Lupper was calling and i’d heard great things… while this was one of my most expensive luppers ever, it was also one of the most tasty. I couldn’t break my habit Barb and I had started of wine and dessert with each meal … tho this time i didn’t have anyone to share it haha! I opted for a nice glass of local Lucia wine, the wonderful ambrosia burger, and a triple berry pie while enjoying my view of the ocean yet again. awesome.

I’d passed enough time to start thinking about sunset again, so i opted to head back to the beach just in case that ray of light might happen… I spent some time just enjoying the waves crashing and wonderful fresh sea air and then got to work trying to capture some cool images. There were just a few others on the beach with me- it seems everyone knew the ray of light wasn’t going to happen. To top it off the weather got even stranger and it even hailed at one point! I waited it out and got some fairly good color in the clouds, but mostly i wanted to enjoy my last sunset in big sur right on the ocean. another great day!

My flight into San Jose went quickly and before i knew it I was back on the road heading south on the 101 going towards King City. My original plan was to head to Monterey for a day there then on to Big Sur, but fate had another plan. In mid March there was a slip out (read the road fell into the ocean) on Rt. 1 south of Monterey but north of Big Sur . This small detail meant you had to take the long way and come up from the south to get to Big Sur.. and in addition there had been a few mudslides including a big one that closes the road to the south from 7pm to 7am. Sooo that meant my plans had to change. I weighed my options and decided that Big Sur was higher priority to me than hitting Monterey. I did have a bucket list item to check off… so my decision was made down to King City, then west to the coast.

Two hours to KC and then 2 more hours of windy slow driving and I was on cliffs overlooking the ocean, what a view! I quickly checked into my hotel which was almost right where the little windy road came out onto Rt 1 and would be a perfect base for me. And while i was there i decided to have a late lunch, or on photo trips i refer to these as “Lupper” (lunch/supper). So after some really great fish and chips I dropped off my bags and went off to scout spots, take some grabshots, and drive all the way up to Bixby Bridge where the road was closed to the north.

The coastline was just spectacular, tall cliffs dropping into a blue ocean, waves crashing, sun shining… I started working my way north and couldn’t get enough of the coastline and dark blue ocean. After an hour or so i came upon my main mission for this part of the trip: McWay Falls in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. I’d seen a picture of this waterfall when i was a little girl on a calendar my mom got for me one year for christmas. It was the cover of the calendar and I remember thinking it was one of the prettiest things I’d ever seen, and after all these years I still feel that way. When i found out it was in Cali’s Big Sur Coast and had super easy access i said “I MUST GO!” – thus this portion of the trip!

So I took the quick hike and it was just like i’d imagined, just beautiful to see a 80′ waterfall fall into the ocean of blue in a beautiful little cove. I spent some time taking some pics in the afternoon light, but knew i’d want to come back for sunset.

I continued on my way north and continued to stop in just about every pullout on the way I made it to Bixby and started working my way back with a stop at Hurricane Point. I found out why it’s called that- it was so insanely windy i almost got blown over just walking around. But what a view!

It was getting closer to sunset now so I made my way back to McWay Falls and spent the rest of the evening enjoying the view and taking way too many pictures of the falls. Only 1 other photog was there enjoying it with me, we didn’t say a word to each other but that was just fine… it was the perfect end to my first day in Big Sur.

At our third field, I was just getting back in the mode and getting what i thoguht would be some good shots when Barb yells to me, “Heidi, we have company and may need to move!” as a truck drives up towards us pretty quickly. I walk back to the car and we notice that he stops and walks up to us… “Have you seen a man walking around?” and we hadn’t and told him so.. Barb (being barb which is why i love her) asks “And who are you?” as we were originally think he may have been the land owner as weren’t entirely sure we weren’t trespassing… but he said he was out enjoying the flowers and was driving up a wash nearby and happend upon an overturned SUV and was trying to find the driver.

Now Barb and i had both heard some revving nearby a few minutes before, but hadn’t thought anything of it, thinking it was most likely a 4 wheeler enjoying the dirt tracks… but after hearing about this vehicle we started to wonder if maybe it was him he’d heard., and if it might have been the photographer from a few minutes before.. but we didn’t hear any kind of crash and i thought maybe we should have but then again its the hills and sound does weird things… we decided to try to help search for the missing owner and ended up checking out the overturned suv.

We were able to see 2 sets of tracks, one of which was very likely the tracks of the suv… but the other set was comign from a different direction but also seemed to be aimed at the same area of the cliff of the wash. They both seemed to have braked or slid hard and the suv had rolled over. We did find a cell phone near the 2nd set of tracks but it didn’t turn on and we had no idea if it was the suv’s or not… we checked in with the “good samaritan” who had checked the vehicle, take GPS coords, and mentioned he might let the cops know what was up… so we did a few more drive arounds to try to find the owner but after an hour we decided there wasn’t anything else we could do so we went back to flowers.

We decided to leave that are and went back to the fun off-roading tracks nearby and found a wonderful fields of owl’s clover and lots of poppies that were in better shape than our original fields… we spent some good time there taking lots and lots of photos.

We finally decided we’d had enough and started back on our way… with of course 1 last pitstop to capture a road surrounded in poppies….

We’d been debating all day as to what may have happened back at the rollover and ultimately decided that maybe that samaritan hadn’t turned it in, and we were thinking maybe we should tell the cops just in case… after a quick call to my father-in-law we agreed that we should tell them what we knew… so we made a stop at the sheriff’s station and ended up having to call in to the county cops to give them our details.. we’d taken pics so we had licence plates and the makes of vehicles and i had saved waypoints on my iphone so we could tell them as many facts as possible… we felt good when we found out it hadn’t been reported…

we ended the night with a very yummy dinner back at the Lemon Leaf and spent the night sharing pictures, stories, and geting a super night’s rest… I think we both agreed we had a spectacular trip… we timed it perfectly with peak flowers on sunny, windless days… had a nice side trip to the coast, and truly got into photo mode for a few days with a great friend. Good stuff.

And thanks to miss Barb for always saying i was a good driver, despite the train rush and my many quick turns and sudden stops (granted some of those were for pics so that’s ok)… and for the great fun and debates on our mystery….

Now for me on to the coast!

We made a quick stop at the entrance but quickly decided to move on and see what Carrizo had in store for us. First we encountered some cows, as it seems that the NM also shares some of its land and borders with ranches that graze cattle. We stopped to take some portraits of the cows, even after all those years of growing up with them i still like to get pics of them, and these weren’t the usual dairy cows either – they had droopy ears

As we started back up i noticed that there were LOTS of furry caterpillars on the road making the crossing. I tried to dodge the cute furries but i’m afraid some of them won’t make it to butterflyhood as there were just too many that i couldn’t thread the needle every time. It was strange, they were always on the pavement portions and never on the dirt.

We continued on and did some stops along the way for some fiddleneck, some neat purple thistles, and then finally for fields for we think of goldfields and some other yellow flowers.

Near the lovely yellow flowers we happened upon a biker from SLO (san luis obispo) who barb chatted up (surprise haha!) but we did get some good info from him… The plains road follows along parallel to the San Andreas Fault just off to the east. We were on the Pacific Plate side and we could see the ridges on the North American Plate side. Kind of fun to be right on the fault line imagining what could happen.

We also found out that they (who they are i’m forgetting) are trying to reintroduce natural animals and bring the area back to a more native state to create an “american serengeti”. So a group of 150 elk and 100 pronghorn antelope have been reintroduced to the area, although we didn’t see them unfortunately. He also told us about how they get rid of the tumbleweeds by bringing in a large herd of sheep for a few weeks to nibble off the plants and eat the seeds for a few years in a row, eventually reducing them and now they are non-existent in the area. We thought that was a super cool way of returning the land back to its natural habitat.

After much chatting and getting a dinner referral (Big Sky Cafe gets a big thumbs up from us) we were on way to SLO. WE did stop at the amazing yellow fields near Soda Lake but after the intense poppies our standards were a bit high… we worked our way through the rolling hills, spotting some deer along the way. We did a quick scouting trip to Shell Creek. While fun and pretty, not picturesque enough for us and absolutely very little flowers to tempt us.

We stopped for dinner and a quick walk through town. SLO has a really fun casual feel to it. The downtown area was pretty with trees lining the street with its wide sidewalks and fun little shops. It was bustling with activity on a saturday night and looked like a fun place to hang out if we’d had more time.

We continued on to our final destination for the night, Morro Bay. We hadn’t really known what to expect but were excited to see that our hotel was 2 blocks from the ocean and there was a fun little wharf area in addition to the fact that we could drive right on out to Morro Rock, the namesake of the bay. The rock is a volcano cone remnant and i’m sure would make cool climbing if it were allowed. We drove to both sides (with some more major needle threading of insane potholes) and explored a bit trying to decide if we should try to do a sunset photo shoot. We did have fun watching the waves crash into the wall of rocks that protected the bay- there would be occasional sets that would be huge and just crash so hard and high we could hear it… something about that was just fun.

We drove around a bit going back and forth on the perfect sunset location and after a few detours we ended up on the beach to the north, which provided both a nice beach walk but also a possible picture. We didn’t get a great sunset or color but did enjoy the walk. The only downside to jumping around on the rocks and frolicking on the beach was that somehow i lost my main credit card.. a bit of a bummer but i’m thinking the fishes might get me some AA miles haha. After a bit of looking in the dark, we gave up and made the call to cancel and get a new one… despite the drama it was a good day on the road.