Big Sur

After our weekend in LA we headed north along the coast to San Francisco. The route is known as "Big Sur." You drive north out of LA on the Pacific Coast Highway ("the PCH") past the well-known cities of Malibu and Santa Barbara. Eventually the road narrows to a two-lane highway and starts to hug the coast where spectacular views are in abundance - so long as it's not summer when the coastal haze hangs over the whole coast....

The views, between the fog, are amazing. The pacific ocean crashes onto to the cliffs and long sandy beaches. The ocean changes color from aqua to green and back to deep blue all in the space of a few miles.

On the way we stopped off in San Simeon to camp for the night. We found a nice site in one of the national forests along the way which wasn't far from our next step - "Enchanted Hill," AKA the Hearst Castle.

Monsieur Hearst was a newspaper mogul way back in the day and decided to build a house up in the hills on the coast at San Simeon. The house was custom built by one of the first female architects of the day, Julia Morgan, and due to Mr. Hearst's proclivity for tinkering, it was never really finished. The estate consists of the "Casa Grande" with 130+ rooms as well as three separate cottages for guests. Each house is decorated with Italian and Spanish antiques and the attention to detail is superb. We did expect the whole estate to be a little tacky and overwhelming but we were pleasantly surprised and would certainly have liked to be on the guest list for parties there along with frequent guests Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, etc....

After the Castle, we headed further up the coast along Big Sur and at every twist and turn we were greeted with even more awe inspiring views of the pacific coastline.

We even saw some elephant seals:

Along the way we stopped at the McWay Falls, California's only coastal waterfall which drops 80 ft straight into the ocean (or onto the sand if the tide is out).

We stopped at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park to camp for the night, a beautiful campsite along the Big Sur River in the midst of redwood trees.  Our site was perfect - just by the river and surrounded by redwoods.

During the evening we had a little bit of a fright - a skunk decided that our campsite was a perfect place for him to hang around. Everyone knows that skunks smell really bad but did you know that the smell hangs around forever if you have the misfortune to get sprayed? We were very pleased when the skunk decided to leave our site without getting too agitated....

We continued our drive and were treated to more spectacular vistas:

Eventually we reached the Monterrey peninsula. For all you golfers out there, this is the home of Pebble Beach golf course. First we stopped in Carmel-by-the-Sea, a pretty little town with lots of rules and Clint Eastwood as former mayor. We then headed to Monterrey via the "17-Mile Drive" by the aforementioned Pebble Beach, a few other prestigious golf courses, and the infamous "lone cyprus."

In Monterrey we stopped off at their Aquarium, "world famous" we hear. The aquarium was good and the exhibitions really interesting, but we would recommend going really early in the morning because there is no limit to the number of visitors/screaming children and it is crazy busy!

From here it's just a short ride to our next major stop - San Francisco and the Bay Area.