We had deliberately left our trip to the Big Sur, or Highway 1 until today to get the best of the weather and avoid weekend crowds. It was a good decision.
We left the hotel in bright sunshine and it was already warm. By the time we got back to Carmel, it had got quite hot. The Big Sur is generally accepted as stretching from Carmel-by-the-Sea in the north all the way down Highway 1 to San Simeon, a distance of about 90 miles. The road follows the coast most of the way and was built in the 1930s during the Great Depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps, in a effort to stave off mass unemployment. The road is spectacular, often perched on cliffs hundreds of feet about the Pacific Ocean or over huge bridges.
Our first stop was at Point Lobos State Park where we paid a fee of $9 with gave us admission to all the state parks down the Big Sur for 1 day. Lobos in this instance refers to Sea-Lions rather than wolves!. It was very hot in the park, but down at the coast we able to watch Sea-Otters and Sea-Lions as well as lots of sea-birds.
From here on, we stopped at just about every vantage point all the way down to Lucia. Most of the view-points are on the right-hand side of the road as you travel south, so it makes it easier to do the sightseeing going in this direction. There were a few sets of road works down the road, mostly replacing sections of road that had slipped down towards the sea! At most of the view points, it was possible to see wildlife of one description or another.
Just before the Julia Pfeiffer Brown State Park, at one view-point, we realised that we could see Californian Condor circling above us, high in the hills. We had been hoping to see these, but hadn't been too optimistic as they are still endangered and not very plentiful. We were lucky enough to see three here. Further down the road in the State Park, Lynn saw two more (or maybe they were the same birds) whilst we were trying to find a waterall that crashed down from the cliffs onto the sand below.
Down at Lucia, we stopped for lunch and sat on a patio high about the ocean with far-reaching views, it would have been very pleasant to laze around there, but we had already been almost 6 hours driving down the coast! Finally, not far north of San Simeon, we came across an Elephant Seal colony. There were hundreds of these huge seals on the beach and in the water. Apparently, they were assembling for breeding season. There were lots of females and sub-adults and just a few bull seals. These bulls were probably not fully grown as the adult bulls weren't expected to arrive and start fighting for harems for several weeks. Nonetheless, they were still play fighting and making a lot of noise.
We continued on down to San Simeon where we stopped for a break before heading back up the 90 miles to Carmel. What had taken us 6-7 hour to drive south, we covering in less than 2 going north!. Towards Carmel, we witnessed a spectacular sun-set as we continued north and eventually got back to Salinas at about 1900.
We went straight to Applebys for dinner. Here we ran into a few problems, the restaurant had run out of diet coke and ribs and delivered Lins dinner without the advertised boiled potatoes. After calling out the Manageress, Lin got a free Maragarita and dinner because of the problems.
Hotel - Laurel Inn Motel
Weather - Clear skies and sunny. Slowly warmed up all day to reach 90s mid afternoon
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