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The Great American Road Trip: Big Sur Part 2
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Courtesy of HikinginBigSur.com, McWay Fall, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park
(Click here for the first part of this article.)
The first tourist attraction south of Carmel is Point Sur State Historic Park, where an 1889 stone lighthouse is a sentinel high above the Pacific. A 2- to 3-hour guided tour includes a half-mile walk with a 300-foot gradual climb to the lighthouse, which is located on a dramatic promontory. Wildflowers and the sight of migrating whales are among the rewards.
The Big Sur River flows down from the Santa Lucias through the Los Padres National Forest into Andrew Molera State Park, falling into the Pacific at a long, sandy strand. One of many hiking trails in the park runs along the river through a eucalyptus grove where Monarch butterflies overwinter, to the river mouth where sea and shore birds gather. Horseback riders wander through redwoods and Santa Lucia fir trees, found only here.
Where Highway One turns away from the coast for a few miles, the town of Big Sur Valley is just an unruly scattering of riverside cabin resorts and motels, a few art galleries and campgrounds, anchored by Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. The park is popular for swimming in the Big Sur River and camping in the redwoods. A short hike along the banks of Pfeiffer-Redwood Creek, crisscrossed by wooden bridges several times, leads through ancient redwoods to Pfeiffer Falls, a sixty-foot-tall torrent at its best after a rain. A little farther on, the Valley View Trail arrives at benches overlooking Point Sur and the lush Big Sur Valley, which in the fall turns into a bowl of golden and fiery red maples, alders, sycamores and oaks.
Near the park, off the highway at the western end of two-mile long, narrow and winding Sycamore Canyon Road is a white sand beach decorated with sea stacks and rock arches. On the highway just south of this beach, the restaurant, Nepenthe, has since 1949 has been a beloved daytrip destination. Tables are set on a rambling stone terrace perched on a high bluff overlooking a long and dizzying of the coastline, just the spot for enjoying an “Ambrosia burger” and a glass of Central Coast wine in the sunshine, or by the fire pit as the sun sinks slowly into the western horizon.
One of the main attractions of the wooded kingdom of Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park is the paved, half-mile trail along McWay Creek that leads to a waterfall plunging over a fifty-foot cliff(see photo above), the only fall in California emptying directly into the ocean. Wild iris and columbine bloom in redwood glens and fern grottoes on Pine Ridge Trail, where river cascades, hot springs and quiet swimming holes are to be discovered.
On the west side of the park, Partington Creek Trail enters a canyon and a 200-foot-long rock tunnel––said to have been carved by pirates to hide their cache––emerging at Partington Cove, where sea otters and scuba divers play in the kelp beds. Believed to be extinct by the 1930s, wiped out by fur traders, sea otters were rediscovered in a single Big Sur cove. From a few survivors, the endangered otter population has increased to more than 2,000 today. Another endangered creature, the California condor was reintroduced in Big Sur and can occasionally be seen soaring over the redwoods.
About half way between Carmel and San Simeon, Jade Cove is actually a string of coves, where nephrite jade is exposed on the beaches at low tide and following storms. Wave action and the tectonic movements of the submerged Pacific tectonic plate break off boulders and smaller stones from an underwater vein. The jade stones tumble in a frothy seawater and pebble bath, emerging as found treasure for beachcombers, who are allowed to take what they can hand-carry.
A few miles north of Hearst Castle, a peninsula promontory atop 400-foot cliffs––Ragged Point––is the last stop for views of the Big Sur coastline. A steep, switchback trail traces the face of the cliff past an impressive waterfall on the way to a small beach.
(This is an excerpt from the upcoming book by Karen Misuraca and photographer Gary Crabbe, entitled Backroads of the California Coast.)
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