Big Sur Magic Photo Tour

There's a place midway along the coast of California where rugged mountains meet the Pacific ocean, creating one of the most beautiful areas of the United States. For miles and miles, the slender road named Highway One clings to steep mountainsides, winding its way through canyons, cliffs, and high narrow bridges, and the speed limit rarely tops 35 miles per hour. Until the road was built, in the 1930s with convict labor, the only way to traverse the mountains was via horse trails and precarious wagon roads.

Because of the high rainfall, rockslides often close portions of the road for months at a time. When we followed it last weekend on our way to Big Sur, four slide areas were under reconstruction.

And so begins our photo tour of Pfeiffer Big Sur state park, where one of the world's three remaining redwood forests begins. Here, in the coastal redwoods, are the world's tallest trees. This area suffered an enormous wildfire in the early autumn of 2009, bringing down many trees, denuding mountainsides, and causing massive landslides that winter.

A fern ravine filled with rocks exposed and tumbled by rainfall.

Fields of clover fill the shady areas.

My daughter Milo and I took a hike up a canyon near our campsite.

Our humble abode in the state park.

Along the rocky Pacific coast, beaches are scarce.

Pfeiffer Beach is subject to fierce riptides. On the path to the beach is a memoriam for a young Kansas girl who was swept out to sea and drowned some years ago while wading at the ocean's edge. Her mother and grandmother also drowned trying to save her.

My husband skips stones on the surf. Temperatures were in the high 50s, and it's a windy beach.

Milo and Kaleb sit on a boulder at the foot of the steep bluffs edging the beach.



This is new growth rising from a fallen redwood. Even when felled, redwoods live on.

I share a last name with this Calochortus Alba, also known as a white globe lily or fairy lantern.

Looking up into the canopy of an old redwood. They are an ancient species, with the older ones in the park dating back to the signing of Magna Carta.

The Big Sur River, which many would call a creek, was flowing fast with rain runoff. Steelhead trout that were born in this river are able to find it again after a season spent in the ocean, and this is their time for swimming upriver to lay eggs.

Blue jays in the state park are used to people.

Fungi will eventually help break down this redwood log.

New growth at the foot of a redwood seared by wildfire.

A variety of grasses line the trails.

The late afternoon sun shines through a grove of young redwood.

Hope you enjoyed this taste of a beautiful place in our neck of the woods.

Thanks for traveling with me.