(Volumes 1 and 2 are down below)
This is it. This is the Big One. The following 90-mile journey is the reason people come to California, or at least it should be. There is nothing I can say or write, no photo that I could take which would capture the essence of the Big Sur coast; it must be experienced, embraced, inhaled like a lover’s breath. To me, for me, there is but Big Sur; everywhere else there be monsters.
Mile by mile the road winds tighter, the mountains grow steeper and the views more grand. You will be overcome with an overwhelming desire to stop at every lay-by, every turnout, every sharp bend, so that you can stare slack-jawed at the awesome grandeur of it all.
That is, if you actually get to see anything.
Apart from the mind-wrenching beauty, this stretch of Hwy 1 is best known for three things: mud and rockslides that eradicate vast tracts of roadway like sadistic young boys squishing ants, and fog. Fog like no other. Fog so thick that I’ve had to open the driver-side door so that I could follow the centre line on the road. Fog that, at night, gives you visibility somewhere between none and “Holy shit we are all going to die!” We’re talking about views out the front windscreen like this. No lie.
Before setting out on Hwy 1 it is imperative that you check the road conditions. The California Dept. of Transportation helpfully provides a website where you can do this. You could also ask a local but their view of what a passible road is often differs from what rational individuals would consider safe or sane. Those “few rocks in the road” for a native driving a 4x4 with wheels the size of the London Eye, could turn out to be chunks of mountainside large enough to engulf a mid-size family saloon.
Assuming both the weather and the road are clear you are going to want to take pictures, lots and lots of pictures and each and every one of them will be rubbish. People spend their entire lives marching up and down the Big Sur coast laden with gigantic cameras and tripods and no one has been able to capture THE definitive image of the place. Even Ansel Adams, arguably the finest landscape photographer who ever looked through a ground glass, when confronted with the enormity of Big Sur said “to hell with it” and pointed his camera at the shrubbery.
This isn’t to say that there haven’t been great photos taken along the coast, there have been, it’s just that you aren’t going to take any. This says less about your photographic skills and more about the near impossibility of the task, made worse by the subtle and sudden variations in the light and the uncertainty of the weather.
Of course I’m probably just bitter because I’ve been going to Big Sur for 30 years and the only thing I have to show from it is an embarrassingly large pile of images that wouldn’t be worthy of a Flikr page devoted to photographs produced by squirrels.
Keeping all this in mind, let’s set off.
A few miles north of San Simeon, off to the left of the highway, is a long stretch of rocky beach that attracts tourists like hookers to a naval base. Piedras Blancas (White Stones. The Spanish named them after rocks coved with bird guano) is the dry-land home and rookery to thousands of Elephant Seals.
Because I dropped my marine biology course after realizing that it didn’t interest me in the least, I’ll let these guys fill in the details as to why these enormous bags of fat and stink decided to nest on this particular parcel of sand.
I’m not sure what the seal population will be like in October but when we swing through in January the beach is littered with them. The cows have given birth and their calves are nursing; the alpha males keep watch over their harems and engage in noisy fights for dominance. The young nerdy males with glasses and spots bob in the shallows, ignored by the females, like me at a high-school dance. Unable to mate these males eventually wind up wearing ironic t-shirts and working in IT.
About 14 years ago the State carved out a car park and built two wooden viewing areas so that hordes of camera toting tourists could gawk at the Elephant Seals while they, in turn, remained completely inert and lifeless.
With the exception of a Justin Bieber photo-shoot, I can’t imagine more cameras pointed at something that doesn’t warrant photographing. Unless you are lucky enough to catch the males in the act of pummelling each other into a coma, every single photo taken of these things makes them look stone dead.
Claire is, of course, smitten by the creatures so every single year I am forced to pull off, bundle up and walk up and down the paths so that she can continuously ooh and ah at them as they continuously do nothing at all.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t stop and take a look. To a Brit whose exposure of wildlife consists of sulky cage-bound rabbits, squished pheasants and BBC nature documentaries, being ten feet from a 3000 pound sea monster with a snout like a bag of wet cement and a howl like a flushing toilet passed through a megaphone, the experience must be something close to religious rapture. As for me, after 20 viewings in as many years, I’d just as soon sit in the car.
Leaving the Elephant Seals and once again heading north along Hwy 1, I’m going to let you just get on with it. You shouldn’t be reading this, or consulting a map or doing anything other than looking at the view (and driving!).
For several miles the road meanders along only a few yards above the ocean and then at Ragged Point it starts a slow climb up along the side of the coastal mountain range. As the highway begins to get seriously curvaceous and narrow you might wonder what prompted anyone to build a road so precariously positioned along a cliff-edge.
The answer, as always, was money. In the 1920s and 30s, land developers, miners and lumber companies wanted to open up (read “exploit”) the Big Sur coast. They sold the idea as a “coastal defence” project, greased the palms of a few government officials, brought in slave labour in the form of convicts from San Quentin prison and the result is the motorway you are driving on today. Make sure to thank corruption and forced labour for these spectacular views!
From Ragged Point to Big Sur proper there are only two areas of consolidated human habitation. Lucia, known for its good lunches, great views and horrible motel and Gorda (fat lady in Spanish) made famous by having the highest petrol prices in the United States.
In order to keep the narrative skipping along, I’m going to pass over a large bit of coast and pick things up again as you are approaching Big Sur. You’re going to be too busy looking around, stopping and taking (bad) pictures to pay any attention to me anyway.
Do keep an eye out for Limekiln State Park, you’ll want to come back and hike there later. In fact, Big Sur is all about hiking. Driving along Hwy 1 is all well and good but in order to really experience the place you’re going to have to abandon your car, set down the Fritos (I told you they were addicting) and hit the trails.
Unless you stick to the seaside walks, hiking in Big Sur can break you. Simply walking from roadside trail-head to the first switchback could leave you shattered and weeping. See those mountains to your right? The paths that lead up through them have the sharpest elevation gain of any trails in the US: 400’ to 4100’ in the space of a few miles. If you’re up there alone and break a leg it’s game over. If you are going up with someone, carefully evaluate your relationship and decide whether your bond with them is strong enough so that you would be willing to haul their broken body back down over five miles of boulders and poison oak. Sure, you could abandon them to go for help but best be back before dark because that’s when the mountain lions come.
I’ve never taken Claire up into the hills. It’s just too risky. She’d have me over a cliff and be back in Carmel cruising for a rich husband before my body bounced twice.
You’re going to need at least three full days to even get a taste of Big Sur. As far as accommodations go, you really only have one option, Deetjen’s. Sure you could spend crazy money at the Ventana Inn, fantastically crazy money at the Post Ranch Inn, or even camp at Pfeiffer State Park but none of the above are even a quarter as pants-droppingly romantic as Deetjens.
Deetjen’s looks like a ramshackle assortment of poorly constructed shacks propped up against enormous redwoods. Looks can be deceiving but in this case, looks are spot-on.
Grandpa Deetjen was a cantankerous Norwegian immigrant who settled along the banks of the small river that runs through Big Sur’s Castro Canyon. In the 1930s he started lashing together reclaimed lumber and bits of tin to form draughty “cabins” to rent to the punters that were making their way along the newly opened Hwy 1.
Gradually he became a better builder, his wife a better manager and by the time he died in 1972 and left the complex to the State of California, the 20 rooms had been transformed from “dilapidated” to “cosy.”
Deetjen’s is still rustic. There are no phones, TVs, wi-fi hotspots or locks on the doors. Mobile coverage is non-existent and the bathrooms seem like an afterthought. The walls are Kleenex thin and they don’t let you burn candles in the rooms for fear of torching the place.
What they do have, what keeps thousands of us coming back year after year, is bucket-loads of charm. Stepping inside our favourite cabin is like coming home. The odd slope of the roof, the ill-fitting door, the wonky shower head, I love each as if they were my own, slightly retarded, children.
The place gives you +10 romantic hit points and the only possible way to spend a night at Deetjen’s without getting laid is to be parked there in an ambulance with a sheet pulled over your head.
Due in no small part to this heady romanticism the beds at Deetjen’s have a lot of miles on them. Yet despite this, or perhaps because of it, they are topped with the most comfortable mattresses and softest sheets in the known universe. I’m talking about clouds of candy-floss covered with spun unicorn hair. Insomniacs who don’t respond to heavy medication are prescribed these beds.
The only things better than the beds are the journals that sit next to them. Almost from the beginning Deetjen’s has been stocking their rooms with hardbound notebooks for the guests to scribble in. Stacks of notebooks, going back decades, are in each room. Reading them is to take a trip down the rabbit hole of human emotion. Open any journal at random and within half a dozen pages you’ll experience consciousness expansion through the dilated pupils of drug-addled junkies and enough lust and raw passion to make Anais Nin cough a little and back away in embarrassment. If these books are to be believed then Deetjen’s has been responsible for more pregnancies than big American back seats and cheap beer.
Of course you’re going to write in these journals, I’ve been doing it for nearly 30 years and Claire for the past twelve. The desire to have your words become a permanent resident of this place is irresistibly tempting. Sea air and sex will bring out truthfulness but be warned, I had a colleague at work find the first journal that Claire and I wrote at Deetjen’s and it took me bags of peanut M&Ms to buy her silence.
Deetjen’s has a pretty wide range of rates that vary proportionally by the size of room and whether or not you want to share a bath. If you can possibly afford it, get a room with a fireplace I am NOT going to tell you which is our favourite room because didn’t you read the part about the journals?
All that sex is going to make you hungry so here are the top three post-coital restaurants:
Deetjen’s. Book the restaurant for the day you arrive. You’ll have had enough driving by that point so that all you will want to do is unpack, shower and go some place nice and easy. Deetjen’s restaurant is every inch as hopelessly romantic as the rooms: candle-lit, creatively adorned with carefully selected items from charity shops, superb food and a resident cat.
The Restaurant at the Ventana Inn.. You’re just going to have to accept the fact that eating here is going to set you back a week’s pay. The Ventana Restaurant is as close to epicurean perfection as this planet can provide. Claire is beside herself with rage when we visit because she can find no fault with it. Arrive early, have a drink at the beautiful driftwood bar; sit beside the fire, allow the attentive service to wash over you like warm pudding. It doesn’t matter what you order, it will all be fantastic but the scallops are my personal fave and the filet mignon and duck breast are Claire’s. If you can, make sure you get Richard as your host. He’s tall with grey hair and quite possibly the best waiter that ever wore an apron. Tip well, he brings happiness.
The Big Sur Bakery. Simple, homey, with slightly scatter-brained service (it’s run by the children of folks that spent a little too much time following the Grateful Dead around), get a table by the fire because heat isn’t something they do there. Setting all that aside the Big Sur Bakery’s food is why we keep going back. It is a real live bakery so as you would expect their breads and pizza crusts are nothing short of miraculous. Claire has been known to dump bowl after bowl of their bread into her handbag just to make sure they keep brining more. They are big on roasts and pizzas. Take it from me, those sad, misshapen, rubbery things covered in watery red sauce and topped with tinned corn that pass for pizzas in England bear not even a passing resemblance to the circular delights served up by The Big Sur Bakery. Pro tip: Serrano chillies, a popular pizza topping at The Bakery, ignite the tongue on contact. The fine print at the bottom of the menu helpfully informs the patron that said peppers are “spicy”. I am sure I still have intestinal scarring.
What to do
Because your time is limited and there is so much to see you are going to have to plan this bit in advance. If you don’t own matching pairs of travel binoculars buy some before you get to Big Sur. Binoculars might sound like something parents and other ancient types keep in the glove box of their cars but if you don’t want to find yourself standing on a hillside in Big Sur unsure if the tiny speck in the water is an otter or a lump of kelp you will thank your weird old uncle Mark that he made you get a pair.
As I mentioned above, there are no shortage of hiking trails and beaches in and around Big Sur. Check in with the rangers at Big Sur Station before setting off. You can also pick up trail guides, maps and “I heart Big Sur” t-shirts.
Note: California is broke so a lot of state parks and beaches that used to be free now charge a fee and those that already had fees doubled them. While it is sometimes possible to park outside the entrance and walk in you will be cheating my people out of badly needed revenue used to maintain the parks and pay for all those fences keeping you off the best beaches. If your conscience prevents you from skiving off without paying, it is best to keep a fistful of $1, $5 and $10 bills handy to feed into the self-pay slots. They can no longer afford for rangers to collect your money so it’s all on the honour system. Yeah, that’s working out well…
South of the ranger station
Less than a mile south of the ranger station, on the opposite side of the highway, is a turn-off for Sycamore Canyon Road. About an hour before sunset follow this down to Pfeiffer Beach, bundle up like it’s a summer’s day in Brighton and follow the sandy path to the ocean. Waves have carved out two large openings in the giant rocks just along the surf line and if you’ve got your timing right you’ll see the sun go down framed by a doorway of light and colour.
An easy win is the McWay Waterfall Trail. It requires almost no effort and provides instant gratification by way of a lovely waterfall and the ruins of a house that quite possibly had the best views ever recorded. The waterfall beach (no, you can’t get down to it) is only lit properly in the afternoon. If you go earlier the beach will be in shadows, your photos will make a mockery of the photographic arts and you will leave shamed and disappointed.
Further south is Limekiln Trail (remember this from the drive up?). It only reopened last year after a devastating fire so I am not sure if all the vegetation has grown back. Limekiln has actual limekilns, four of them, rising out of the forest like inverted ICBM silos. There is also a 100’ waterfall and walking to the beach under the bridge provides a good chance to feel very, very small.
North of the ranger station
About six miles north of the ranger station is Andrew Molera State Park. You can either pay $10 to park in their car park or pretend you’re a local and use the lay-by. Your route through the park will be dependent on the time of year and your tolerance for getting wet. During the winter months, when the river is high and the trout are migrating, they take down the bridge that leads to the bluffs trail. Since Claire and I only go there in January we have never actually seen the bridge up so I have no way of verifying if it even exists. Assuming the bridge is not mythical and your timing is right, crossing the river and taking the nine-mile loop trial is supposed to offer some of the most pleasant walking and best views along the entire Big Sur coast.
If the bridge is down you have two options, one, wade through waist-deep water that probably only thawed yesterday or take the Creamery Meadow trail that runs along the river, through the camp ground and down to the ocean. Having a genetic intolerance for hypothermia, I have always chosen walking over wading.
Roughly 1.5 miles from the car park the Creamery Meadow trail forks; with one path going straight ahead to a pebbly beach and another off to the right that takes you up to the bluffs. Both are worthwhile although the bluffs trail offers much better views and a chance to scramble down a cliff face onto a secluded beach where it is entirely possible to become trapped by the tide, swept out to sea and never heard from again.
Assuming you make it back, just up the road from Andrew Molera is the Point Sur Lightstation. In the spirit of full disclosure I feel it only right and proper to admit that I am a lighthouse boffin. The way that Claire gazes fondly on Elephant Seals and anything with legs and fur is how I look at lighthouses. The low lonesome sound of a foghorn makes my eyes roll back and toes curl. If the job were offered, I would be a lighthouse keeper without thinking twice or blinking once. Of course I would have to grow a luxurious beard. Claire might object at first but seeing how well this fellow combined facial hair and felines I know she would come around.
They only run lighthouse tours on Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday so if you are unwilling to schedule your visit around their opening times you may have to admire it from afar. The tour is a little bit of awesome and the guides are lighthouse geeks like me. Wear every stitch of clothing you have because out on that rock the wind never stops blowing. On the plus side they serve hot coco in the gift shop.
If you are feeling a bit too cut off from the outside world you’ll be happy to know that hidden inside the great white wooden water tower that dominates the lighthouse grounds is a cellular transmitter. A mobile provider donated a huge wad of cash to the lighthouse restoration society so that they could rebuild the crumbling water tower. The catch was that said tower had to contain the only cell site along that part of the coast. Win-win.
The last stop on this leg of our journey is Point Lobos State Nature Reserve. About 20 miles north of Big Sur it’s far enough away from your base that you’ll need to dedicate most of a day to it. If you get started early enough you could watch wildlife at Pt. Lobos and then drive into Carmel to watch rich people. It’s a bit of a mental gear-shift especially after a few days living amongst coastal redwoods and hippies.
Pt. Lobos cannot be missed. There is no cheating here, you have to pay the fee, $10, and drive in. Get the map from the ranger and head immediately to Bird Island. Follow the trail from the car park up over the bluffs and around the point, you can’t actually get onto Bird Island but it’s only about 150 yards away. You don’t care about the birds anyway, what you are looking for are otters.
California Sea Otters were hunted to the point of near extinction to make hats for rich European idiots. In fact, by 1930 it was thought that they were extinct until a small group of them were found living under the Bixby Creek Bridge in Big Sur. Encouraged to breed using Marvin Gay music and mood lighting, the otter population began a long comeback. Today there are still only about 2500 of them, all living between Carmel and San Simeon which, to be fair, is where I would live if I could. Because of environmental pollution killing off their food sources, the otter population has been falling over the past few years. Pt. Lobos is one of the few places that, barring very bad luck or lack of binoculars, you are almost always able to find some otters.
Scan the kelp beds just offshore and look for whiskers. Otters like to lie on their backs wrapped up in kelp and it makes them hard to spot. Look for a log with bits that stick up at each end, that’s an otter. You can sometimes see two or more otters floating together holding paws. This is almost terminally cute and could prove fatal to anyone who just suffered the loss of a pet or has recently been dumped by a lover.
Follow the trail north from Bird Rock to China Cove and up to Sea Lion Point. It’s only about a mile and a half but it could easily take you an entire day. Now that you know what you are looking for, you are going to be spotting otters everywhere. Unfortunately only about 10% of what you think are otters are actually otters. You will learn to loath kelp and driftwood.
October is the beginning of the southern migration of Grey whales from Alaska to Mexico. Humpbacks are also active this time of year. Both can be seen from the shore- look for spouts from blow-holes, curved backs and, if you are incredibly lucky, tails.
At Sea Lion Point car park there is a hut where you can pet an otter pelt. One stroke and you will understand why people kept stealing their fur. Make sure to talk to the volunteer manning the hut, they always seem lonely.
This has been a long slog and we’re almost done. There is only one more place I want to mention before signing off for the day. It’s slightly outside the scope of today’s narrative but I wanted to make sure it became part of your game plan.
Monterey California has always played Garfunkle to Carmel’s Simon. A pleasant enough place but somehow lacking that ineffable spark that makes for a genuine superstar.
As recently as the early 70s Monterey was home to an industrial scale fishing industry. The street that became known as Cannery Row was lined with exactly what you would expect: fish canneries. Overfishing and cheap imports drove the canneries out of business but not before John Steinbeck immortalized them in his novel, that staple of middle-school English classes, Cannery Row.
Apart from the name, Steinbeck would now find the street completely unrecognisable. Theme restaurants, galleries selling appalling art and fish-burger bars have replaced the warehouses. The outcasts and misfits that worked tinning sardines and drank themselves to unconsciousness in waterfront pubs have been replaced by obese Midwestern tourists sporting flaming pink hot pants and wraparound mirrored sunglasses.
Your reward for navigating your way through the gauntlet of tourist traps will be a visit to the magnificent Monterey Bay Aquarium.
As part of a school outing or family adventure holiday you may have been dragged to an aquarium in Bristol or London. Suffice it to say that in comparison the aquarium at Monterey Bay makes them look like ill-kept suburban birdbaths.
As I mentioned, marine biology isn’t my strong suit but the Monterey Bay Aquarium is, simply, wow! The centrepiece exhibit is a 1.2 million gallon, 30’ tall acrylic tank containing an entire undersea environment. The tank is accessible from three levels and with the exception of the blue glow from sunlight filtering through the water the viewing areas are kept dark. Without suiting up in diving gear it is the closest you’ll ever get to a walk along the bottom of the sea.
On the side of the tank they post the feeding times so if you enjoy watching fish eat other fish make sure you swing back around.
2000 gallons of seawater per minute are flushed into the exhibits from Monterey Bay and back out again, making the aquarium an actual living part of the outside ecosystem.
If you somehow slept through your entire day at Pt. Lobos and missed sighting otters you’ll get a second chance at the aquarium. A massive two-story tank houses a rotating stock of otters. The aquarium takes in foundlings and injured otters and attempts, with somewhat limited success, to reintroduce them into the wild.
The problem is that otters get very used to being hand-fed by female biology students in tight wetsuits (who wouldn’t?) so when they are ejected back into their biology student free natural habitat the otters suffer separation anxiety. This in turn leads them to use their well-crafted “fluffy and cute” routine to get close to beach goers and use their four-inch spiked jaws and a tail like a steel cable to bat people away and nick coolers.
Because of this most of the otters you see at the aquarium will be turfed out to other zoos or become permanent residents of Monterey.
While we are on the subject of harmless looking creatures that can seriously mess you up, check out The Jellies Experience, it’s a stunning exhibit that just had a multi-million dollar makeover. While I don’t believe a jellyfish’s natural habitat is backlit against a royal-blue field, as a visual effect it is mesmerising.
The first and only time I have ever seen jellyfish in the wild was on holiday in Greece and they creeped me the hell out. These things have no business even existing let alone being freekin’ immortal. “Swarms”, “tentacles” and “multiplying” all feature prominently in that article.
Like all of California, the Monterey Bay Aquarium is big so plan accordingly. Claire and I twice spent the better part of six hours there and we probably still missed things.
One word of warning, before visiting the aquarium set your Annoying Children Buffers to maximum. No matter what hour of the day, or day of the week, the place is infested with roving bands of feral children all hollering and crying and screeching up and down walkways and mashing their little ice cream coated faces against the tanks. Because you are basically inside a Plexiglas bubble the echoes of their banshee-like wails will penetrate your eardrums like spikes from a nail gun.
Next up: San Francisco