A Day on the Central Coast
Today we drove down to the Central Coast. Our objective was Garrapata State Park. It's a beautiful park on the coast with plenty of hiking, including canyons and ridges as well as bluffs overlooking the rocky coast. We've visited numerous times over the past many years.
So Many Cars
Getting to the park today took a bit more effort than it should have, but at least we got a bit of a rolling car show. You see, it's Car Week in Monterey, part of the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. Although we tried to leave home early enough Saturday morning to beat the summer weekend traffic on the Central Coast there were thousands of people converging on the area for the various car shows, many of them driving meticulously restored classics or high-dollar exotics.
Still, we reached the trailhead by 11:30, including a stop for gas and snacks along the way. The park's just 92 miles from home.
Bad News, More Bad News
At the park we quickly discovered two pieces of bad news. First, the heavy fog layer we hoped would burn off by midday- weather forecasts indicated it should burn off- did not.
That was disappointing because the views on the Central Coast are stunning in the sunshine. In the fog they're... still pretty nice, but generally not stunning.
The persistent fog also gave us doubts about whether we'd see anything from the top of Rocky Ridge, where we planned to hike.
In the pic above normally you'd see Rocky Ridge rising up to the left of that old barn. The ridge tops out at over 1,800', a perch from which the views on a clear day are extra-stunning. We know because we've been there a few times before!
Alas, whether or not this fog would burn off was not the only problem. It turned out whole trail up to the summit and down the other side is closed. We'd misread a trail status update when we checked a few days earlier. We'd thought just the steep, erosion prone back half of the trail was closed. "No problem," we thought, "We'll go up and down the front side instead of looping around from the back." Nope.
Making a Day of It
While the ridge trail was closed, the trail into Soberanes Canyon was open. In the past we've made that the first leg of a loop hike including Rocky Ridge. Today we'd just go in and out the canyon.
The canyon hike was okay- the fog cast a pall over the area's natural beauty- and took less time than we'd allotted for climbing the ridge. So after hiking the canyon we used some of our extra time and energy to hike along the ocean bluffs a bit. Along the way we discovered a set of cool little waterfalls near the bluffs we hadn't seen before. I'll post pictures of the canyon and the bluffs in subsequent blogs.
After both hikes we debated where to go next. With extra hours available we could go further south, past Big Sur, to places like the always-beautiful McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. But that park is closed, too. See my trip notes from last year. And the persistent fog layer left us feeling the bloom was off the proverbial rose. We pointed the car north and started the drive home.
Along the drive home we stopped for a late lunch in Monterey. Easy and fast were our top priorities, but even within those constraints we managed to find really awesome food at a fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant in a shopping mall. Hawk had a kefte kabob on pita while I had gyros wrapped in lavash.
Further along the route home we made a slight detour to San Juan Bautista. There was a bead store there Hawk wanted to check out. While we were looking for parking in the historic town's downtown we noticed that there's a fairly extensive historic park there, right in town. Somehow we hadn't noticed that the one time we were in this town before. (Probably it was because we were tired and hungry, and everything other than a handful of tourist oriented restaurants was closed.) We toured around that for a bit before wrapping up the day by buying some treats at a bakery for the drive home.
Update: I've posted additional blogs with photos of these hikes:
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/101098.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]
So Many Cars
Getting to the park today took a bit more effort than it should have, but at least we got a bit of a rolling car show. You see, it's Car Week in Monterey, part of the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. Although we tried to leave home early enough Saturday morning to beat the summer weekend traffic on the Central Coast there were thousands of people converging on the area for the various car shows, many of them driving meticulously restored classics or high-dollar exotics.
Still, we reached the trailhead by 11:30, including a stop for gas and snacks along the way. The park's just 92 miles from home.
Bad News, More Bad News
At the park we quickly discovered two pieces of bad news. First, the heavy fog layer we hoped would burn off by midday- weather forecasts indicated it should burn off- did not.
That was disappointing because the views on the Central Coast are stunning in the sunshine. In the fog they're... still pretty nice, but generally not stunning.
The persistent fog also gave us doubts about whether we'd see anything from the top of Rocky Ridge, where we planned to hike.
In the pic above normally you'd see Rocky Ridge rising up to the left of that old barn. The ridge tops out at over 1,800', a perch from which the views on a clear day are extra-stunning. We know because we've been there a few times before!
Alas, whether or not this fog would burn off was not the only problem. It turned out whole trail up to the summit and down the other side is closed. We'd misread a trail status update when we checked a few days earlier. We'd thought just the steep, erosion prone back half of the trail was closed. "No problem," we thought, "We'll go up and down the front side instead of looping around from the back." Nope.
Making a Day of It
While the ridge trail was closed, the trail into Soberanes Canyon was open. In the past we've made that the first leg of a loop hike including Rocky Ridge. Today we'd just go in and out the canyon.
The canyon hike was okay- the fog cast a pall over the area's natural beauty- and took less time than we'd allotted for climbing the ridge. So after hiking the canyon we used some of our extra time and energy to hike along the ocean bluffs a bit. Along the way we discovered a set of cool little waterfalls near the bluffs we hadn't seen before. I'll post pictures of the canyon and the bluffs in subsequent blogs.
After both hikes we debated where to go next. With extra hours available we could go further south, past Big Sur, to places like the always-beautiful McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. But that park is closed, too. See my trip notes from last year. And the persistent fog layer left us feeling the bloom was off the proverbial rose. We pointed the car north and started the drive home.
Along the drive home we stopped for a late lunch in Monterey. Easy and fast were our top priorities, but even within those constraints we managed to find really awesome food at a fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant in a shopping mall. Hawk had a kefte kabob on pita while I had gyros wrapped in lavash.
Further along the route home we made a slight detour to San Juan Bautista. There was a bead store there Hawk wanted to check out. While we were looking for parking in the historic town's downtown we noticed that there's a fairly extensive historic park there, right in town. Somehow we hadn't noticed that the one time we were in this town before. (Probably it was because we were tired and hungry, and everything other than a handful of tourist oriented restaurants was closed.) We toured around that for a bit before wrapping up the day by buying some treats at a bakery for the drive home.
Update: I've posted additional blogs with photos of these hikes:
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/101098.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]