John & Anne Wiley

I have wondered about this beach with its palm trees, and was happy to have looked it up this time because I love the name China Basin Beach.

5818 China Basin Beach

I’ve wondered if there’s a micro-climate here that has enabled those trees to survive where it’s so cold. I’ve wondered how they haven’t been killed by the salt water that surely reaches them on storm tides. I’ve wondered who has the key to that gate at the top and drives down onto the beach. I like wondering. 🙂

5817 Gamboa Point

Then there’s the beauty of Gamboa Point. Variations in rock and water color. Crevices and sea caves that I imagine riding the surge into on a calm day with the echo of vast Pacific and lone gull behind me. Always the road is so near yet centuries away, and at most every creek it leaps across a bridge like this graceful arched one at Big Creek.

5814 Big Creek

Along the hills and sometimes close to the cliffs are houses like these near Rat Creek. They beg the question of where these people earn a living when a commute outside the Big Sur area is practically impossible.

5801 Big Sur Homes

Nearby at Dolan Canyon another cluster of homes hint at where their residents might work.

5796 Dolan Canyon Homes

Close across their canyon and John Little State Reserve at Lime Creek is a place that probably offers many nearly year round jobs for the hardy souls choosing to live on this coast. I plan to make that place, named Esalen, the focus of my next post.

The lighthouses along Big Sur saved many vessels from ending on the rocks in the days before electronic navigation. Now these sturdy towers are beacons from another era, and monuments to our grandfathers.

5958 Piedras Blancas Light

This one at Piedras Blancas looks a bit embarrassed to not be wearing the fresnel lens “hat” that once qualified it as a serious structure. Once touched by the beam of this light, San Carpóforo Creek offers the last look at flat land going North.

5934 San Carpóforo

Ragged Point offers a ledge on a cliff over the raging Pacific where visitors can now rest safe from storms.

5930 Ragged Point

One of our favorite secret spots is next, masquerading as a wide spot at a deep bend in the highway just past the Monterey County line where you can pull over to let faster traffic rush by. Most who stop there look out to sea, but a path leads off into the forest in the opposite direction along a creek where you can find waterfalls and discover why this is named Redwood Gulch.

5901 Redwood Gulch

For years there were roadside fountains here and elsewhere along this highway, refreshing wearing travelers who paused there with cool water from pure mountain springs and streams. Plaskett Creek offers trails to water and views, including the point where visitors can watch the action on the offshore rock.

5852 Plaskett Creek

Mill Creek offers picnic spots and the rustic camping area at Kirk Creek is popular with hikers.

5849 Kirk Ck & Mill Ck

Next to Limekiln Creek is a new section of highway where rocks used to routinely fall onto the road. Now they can slide under the new long bridge and fall harmlessly on the roof of a rock shelter.

5839 Limekiln Roadwork

With all these wide views you might not notice the innumerable sea caves that are only visible to people in aircraft.

5827 Sea Cave

This one is next to Vicente Creek where yet another bridge is all but unnoticed by most people, who rush along this highway to reach some destination while missing most of the journey.

5825 Vicente Creek

In another way our Coasting trips often begin here at Morro Bay, because we don’t seem to fly beyond there unless going at least to Monterey.

6024 Good Morro

There’s usually a softness about this place, often with the halo of cloud over the rock and the row of her Sisters lined up from blue bay into the gentle distance. Cutting across inland a little toward the hills above San Simeon we see smaller siblings like this standing silent among the trees where few will see more than a glance from afar.

6002 Sibling Rock

Then our trusty Tripp dutifully lofts us up for a glance at Hearst Castle. Renovations and drought have converged to drain the iconic aquamarine pool where William’s parties once blared into the night.

5999 Hearst Castle

We glide quietly past and back down to the beach where motorists pause to stroll between two parking lots and gaze at the Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery.

5965 Piedras Blancas Seals

Then we look off past Point Piedras Blancas to what is for us properly the start of Big Sur, into the distance where flat meets mountains and brown yields to green.

5971 Past Pt. Piedras Blancas