The A-MAYES-ING Adventure: Big Sur

Big Sur.  Day 5 and Day 6.  May 31st and June 1st.  How do I ever come close to describing the beauty of this region. (Day 4 was spent in San Diego going to a friend's wedding...woohoo!!!!!)  I'm nervous about blogging about Big Sur because it's going to be difficult to limit the pictures.  I took 600.  Yup.   It's just so gorgeous!!!!  Many people believe the region surrounding Big Sur (Pacific Highway 1 that drives right along the Pacific Coast) is the MOST BEAUTIFUL stretch of Pacific Highway 1.  We drove along the side of mountains and cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  Sometimes we were 500 feet about the water.  Some parts of this highway were so curvy, hugging the mountain, that you could only go 20 MPH.  It really was incredible.  This is one of the places that Rollin and I would LOVE to visit again.  We left Sunday morning (May 31st) from LA (Saturday night we drove from San Diego to LA to spend the night to shave off time from our drive the next day).  We spent the day drive up to the Big Sur region and then we camped at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Parks.  And by the way, California State Parks and campgrounds are amazing and sooo nice!  The next morning, June 1st, we drove the rest of the stretch to Monterey and then went inland.

Close to the coast!

First glimpse of the Pacific as we drove along Pacific Highway 1.

This is gorgeous, and we aren't even into the mountains yet!

Elephant seals!  They are realllly funny looking!

Look at their noses!!!!!  That's why they are called ELEPHANT seals.

The road is pretty curvy now.

Our jaws dropped when we saw this view.  We were so high up from the water.  The was the start of all the incredible views we saw on this drive up Pacific Highway 1.

We got a little afraid of heights up here!

There's the road we drove on.

This was our favorite view!!

McWay Falls.  I found this place on Pinterest and was determined to stop here!

McWay Falls is technically a "tidefall" because it's a waterfall that empties right into the ocean.

Here's where we camped!

Setting up camp for the first time!

Our campsite was surrounded by Redwood trees.

The next morning we continued driving up Pacific Highway 1 to Monterey.

Lucky cows!  Look at them!  They get to graze right along the ocean.

Bixby Bridge!

The beach at Monterey Bay.

We ate lunch while taking in the Monterey Bay.  Those colors are ridiculously spectacular!

As we drove inland we drove by this reservoir. You can see how bad the drought is in California by the look of those yellow hills!