An unplanned trip to the Big Sur

When I say nothing about this trip was planned, I mean nothing went to plan and I ended up somewhere I never would have guessed. (This trip occurred early April).

My initial trip plan had been to drive to Reno after work, stay the night and take the pass over to Sacramento and then south to Sequoia National Park. As I was driving to Reno the snow hit, I could barely see 20m in front of me and ended up travelling at a snails pace. If you know anything about Donners Summit, you can probably already begin to guess what the results were. I woke up early the next morning to the pass being closed.

After a quick glance at the weather I realised I needed to hit the road immediately to race the snow storm south to LA. Honestly I wont complain too much it was an absolutely stunning drive.

I felt like I was in a movie scene for most of the drive.

I made an impromptu booking in Santa Clarita for the night with the intention to still head to Sequoia the next morning.

After checking the snowfall and weather at Sequoia, I was pretty confident my car could handle it comfortably and that I was well prepared. However, I don’t own chains and even though I didn’t think they were necessary, it still never hurts to be prepared. So I stopped at 12 different car shops along the way, to learn that my tyres are bizarre and the closest set of chains I could get my hands on were in Dallas. Given my confidence I could handle the snow, and the fact the area of Sequoia I wanted to access were lower elevation I continued on the journey there. On a side note, Lemon Cove, is gorgeous and I’d love to one day spend a quiet weekend there.

I made it all the way to the gates, where I was promptly turned away because chains were compulsory. After checking with every single rental company along the drive in, who all had never even heard of my tyre size (thank you to all of them for mansplaining that I had read it wrong when in fact I had not so). It was time to make the decision that was either going to pivot the trip.

I didn’t want to be sad or feel as though I hadn’t seen anything I cared about after putting in all that effort and the many hours of driving. So I did a 180 and drove another 4 hours to the coast. No one looking at the ocean can be sad. Booking a nights accommodation in Monterey, with the intentions to drive Highway 1 down to LA the following day where I was set to meet a friend.

Talk about a drive with a view.

The next morning started off fantastically, with my first drinkable coffee in the US. I purchased it from the Carmel Bakery, and I wish I’d bought 5 more. It was fantastic.

Driving slowly down the coastline, pulling off at essentially every parking lot available. The ocean was just so blue. It was unbelievable against the green of the pine trees and all of the cliffs .

My favourite viewpoint was definitely ~100m up the road from the Little Sur River Bridge.

I couldn’t resist getting a photo in front of this view. Just wow.

I continued approximately an hour south before I hit a road closure, there had been a large landslip that occurred a year or two ago and repairs have yet to be completed. Unfortunately this meant I needed to back track and added ~3hours further driving time to my trip to get down to LA. So once again I needed to think on my feet and come up with a quick plan.

An important reminder on why you need to research your destinations and travel routes.

So I pulled into Julia Pfeiffer State Park whilst I figured out what my next step was. I made the short 10 minute walk to the McWay Falls viewpoint. WOW. Who knew there was such a thing as a waterfall onto the beach. The best part was that I had the place to myself, I imagine later in the day it would be incredibly busy and isn’t a huge viewing area. So keep this in mind if you ever make the trip.

McWay falls directly beside the ocean.

After this I made the decision to slowly dawdle back up the coast and then down the LA. The views from this entire drive were just out of this world. I definitely intend to come back and redo sections of it. I’ve done a bit of research and there appears to be a few insane multi day hikes along this stretch that I intend to check off later in the year. I’d also love to see the lower half of the Highway 1 drive however, I’ll probably save this for post the reopening of the landslip section.

TIPS AND LESSONS LEARNT:

• Be flexible with the plan, the weather in the USA can really make or break a trip.

• Own tyre chains, even in the shoulder season you may need them.

• Carry cash (preferably in $10 notes) for the honesty park entry systems.

• Leave early to see Big Sur, there was no one on the roads on my way south, but on the way back up north it was packed.