ON THE ROAD AGAIN, return trip day 1: Big Sur, CA

After 5 months in Mammoth Lakes, CA, snowboarding and working at a snowboard shop and a restaurant, I have hit the road again! I am heading back to Connecticut for the summer, before starting graduate school somewhere in New England in September.

Aunt Deb has joined me for part of my trip east, and she and I started our adventures today, heading from her house in Danville, CA to Big Sur and the Pacific Coast Highway! The drive up until the Monterrey Peninsula was quite bland.... Highways. That is Cali. But once we hit the peninsula the view opened up to the coast it was gorgeous! We headed straight past Carmel, our overnight destination, and pulled in to the Andrew Moleras State Park to hike the 8 mile loop trail, heading up a ridge overlooking the Pacific coast and the dramatic cliffs and rock islands that characterize this area. We spent about 20 minutes in the parking lot, gearing up, getting our hiking poles and packs ready - it was described as a moderate/strenuous hike. So the adventure begins.....

30 yards onto the trail we ran into a raging river. No bridge. No sign. Confusing....... So we turned around and headed back out to reread the available signs and ran into an elderly ranger, who informed us that all of the trails were closed because of flooding.... Perfect. He mentioned a 2 mile hike that headed straight out, through the campsite, to the beach, with some nice views of the coast. We opted to give it a try, and were just past the campsite (which dominated the 2 miles...) when we ran into 3 park rangers with riffles and handguns. They told us there were reports of 2 men in full camo armed with weapons off of the trail. Side note: we were in the middle of no where really. Very strange to have gunmen in a state park?????

The rangers searched the area for like 30 minutes, and then came out to give us the all clear. I mentioned how it would be just our luck if we ran into the creeps just after the rangers had failed to find them. And of course, we did. Probably 2 minutes later Deb and I started hearing voices, speaking Spanish, and looked up to see 2 men in camo outfits, carrying some kind of cylander. It turned out they were metal detectors. All that drama for nothing. But the hike wasn't too exciting, and we turned back toward the car disappointed.

The ranger had given us some advice on a nice beach down the road that was not marked from the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway), but that was worth the 2 mile, narrow road to get there. This beach really was gorgeous, and the ocean was perfectly wild and rough, with the waves crashing into the rocks along the shore. It was windy, so we huddled in the dunes eating out sandwiches, but I climbed a rock island right on the shore - pretty trecherous - and explored the top, which had great views of the cliffs.

We went to the Big Sur station to check out some hikes that might be worthwhile that afternoon, but there was nothing open because of the flooding and landslide risk, so we headed back to Carmel for the sunset.

Tomorrow we will head out to Big Sur for the morning, and then down towards Death Valley, our next stop. More posts to come!