Once we had breakfast and got going, we realized there wasn't time for the castle. The tour was almost two hours long and it wasn't clear when it was offered so we could arrive at the wrong time and have to wait 2 hours before the next tour.
We had several recommendations for both lunch and dinner with overlooks of the ocean and gorgeous views. On our drive down to Big Sur, we made plans to eat lunch at Nepenthe and dinner at Rocky Point.
Unusual for me, I didn't do any research about Big Sur so I had expected Big Sur was a park in itself, not a town with a bunch of parks to visit. The drive down was probably better than any of the parks we visited. The road winds around various curves so you see the road as it hit hugs the road and then the mountains drops off into a huge cliff that went into the Pacific Ocean.
My husband was extremely patient with me as I asked him to stop about every mile or so in order to get some good photo's. It was beautiful. We stopped at Nepenthe and walked up the stairs to one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen. They had tables lined up so you sat next to one another and it overlooked the mountains, cliffs, and ocean for several miles. After lunch, we headed to Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park.
I had read about a couple of short trails that overlook a waterfall and other picturesque shots. When we arrived, it was a short 1/4 mile hike to the McWay Waterfalls, which are about 80 feet. We left this park and started heading north on Highway 1 toward our dinner reservation. Our next stop was Pfeiffer Beach. Ironically, getting to the beach isn't easy and there are only a few access points. Luckily, we found the directions online before we left about which "unmarked" road to take to this beach.
It was a nice beach. The thing that has fascinated me on this trip are the numerous rocks in the ocean that have been transformed by the consistent tide of the ocean. At Pfeiffer Beach, they had two large rocks where the water had chiseled holes in the middle of them. We walked the beach a bit and then headed back. The weather was in the 60's and the wind was strong so it wasn't exactly weather where you could lay out.
There is a Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park but we ended up not hiking it. At the Andrew Molera State Park there was suppose to be access to the beach via a 1 mile hike. I had to convince my husband it was worth the 2 mile round-trip walk. After paying a $10 park fee, we started on the trail to the beach only to go about 200 feet before there was a medium sized river crossing! Nothing was mentioned about a river crossing in any of the material we read. Considering we didn't want to take off our shoes and socks and stumble through the cold water, we headed back to the car. So much for beach access!
At this point, we headed to Rocky Point restaurant, which literally sat out over a rocky point on the edge of a cliff. We had an expensive (probably too expensive) but delicious dinner and watched the sun set. Another great day!
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