On the bus on the way down from Hearst Castle, I sat next to a woman who told me that you could see elephant seals on the beach near San Simeon, so as I drove north from Hearst Castle, I pulled over at the Elephant Seal Vista. (Gotta love those vistas! :-)) By far, the coolest part of this stop was seeing two elephant seals fighting in the surf just off shore. I felt like I was in National Geographic seeing the waves crashing against these seals as they fought!! Here's a video, but I must say it was REALLY windy, so it's a little shaky and loud. Hopefully you can see the two heads fighting just behind the big rock.
This is the scenery around the vista.
Not able to stand much of the intense wind action blowing sand into my eyes and stinging my arms, I booked it back to my car pretty quickly. Then I was on my way up the coast! So this is basically going to be a lot of photos with not too much narration. I pretty much just drove up the 1, a winding road right along the coast. Turnouts are ubiquitous so I took full advantage to snap tons of photos. There were a lot of people doing the same thing that I was, so I saw one couple a few times at two different pull-offs. It definitely made it more relaxing to know that you could take your time. So here goes...it was gorgeous!! Still near San Simeon...
Now we get further north where the cliffs get steeper...
As you can see from the photo below, I drove in and out of fog rolling in from the ocean. At times, the sky was grey and it was kind of cool, and then I would break out into bright sunshine and blue skies.
You can see the road winding along the coast pretty well in this photo.
At one point, I came to a stoplight. It was apparently due to a rock slide, but as I drove through, I did not see anything. I think they were just repairing the road.
This was one of two bridges I came across. Not sure what this one is called.
One of the spots where I broke into sunshine! I was so suprised at how blue the water was all along my drive. You can really see it here.
My friend Shannon (who I was going to visit in Carmel) told me about this restaurant about 30 minutes south of Carmel called Nepenthe. She said the view was incredible. This was the view peeking out from the parking lot, but I'm sure it was even better from the rooftop restaurant. Since I was not eating, I couldn't get into that part, but I wandered around the nice gift shop for a few minutes. I was also impressed by all the really nice cars in the parking lot. I held my breath as I narrowly squeezed past a nice Corvette!
Okay, this would be much better as a video, but I didn't take one. :-( This is a photo of the fog rolling in between those hills. You could really see it moving in real life!
This is the second bridge, called the Bixby Creek bridge. It is one of the most photographed bridges in the world, mostly due to its gorgeous location.
This cracked me up. It was a bus stop! Basically in the middle of nowhere, right where I parked to take photos of the Bixby Creek Bridge. I mean, who takes this bus??
Getting close to Carmel...
I parked under these huge pine trees to take the above photos. It looked like there was a whole forest of them, but no clear path, so I didn't attempt to wander inside. Plus I kind of needed to get to Carmel.
Thus ends my photo journey of Route 1 through Big Sur! I would highly recommend this trip to anyone on the West Coast. It is definitely doable in a weekend, and did not feel like a 6 hour trip since I was getting out of the car every few minutes, plus the stops at Hearst Castle and Santa Barbara. The scenery and fresh air are well worth it!
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