A Travel Guide to A Weekend Camping Trip in Big Sur

Hi friends! I spent this past weekend in Big Sur, California, and it was magnificent! I want to share our journey with you, with some recommendations on where to go. I was actually leading the trip as an outdoor education trip for my old high school. It was so fullfilling to be able to share my love of the outdoors with high schoolers, and to share the experience with my wonderful co-leader who shot the photos in this post.

For those of you who are not Californians, Big Sur has had a pretty harsh winter. We have experienced some of the heaviest rains that I've seen in my lifetime. There were countless landslides on highway one (the only way to access most parts of Big Sur), and one of the bridges actually collapsed, making a large portion of Big Sur completely inaccessible. Actually, I have a few friends at Esalen who are stranded at the center because they are between the collapsed bridge and a large landslide. Anyways, Brian and I had to change our plans to only visit the northern part of Big Sur that we could still access.

We headed out on Friday morning, gear packed, gas filled, high schoolers pumped up, and food ready. We drove down the coast and made it to highway one. Our first stop was Garrapata Beach, (garrapata means tick in Spanish). We pulled over on the side of the road, parked, and headed down the trail to the beach. It was cold! Big Sur is typically always pretty chilly since it is where the cold water and warm water meet, creating heavy fog. We walked along the beach, and found a beautiful waterfall.

We gave everyone a while to explore and run up the cliffs, write in their journals, draw in the sand, have races, and practice yoga. We headed back towards the car and scrambled up some other rocks until we found a cave. It was huge! We wouldn't have been able to access it by walking on the beach since the tide was high, so bouldering was the way to go. Brian took the photo below from the inside of the cave while I was sitting on top of it.

After our fun afternoon on the beach, we headed to our campsite. We stayed at Fernwood campground, which was absolutely magical. It is a small campground with tent sites, RV sites, luxury tents, and cabins. It is right on the Big Sur river, and nestled in the redwoods. I pitched my tent literally right on the river bank and right under some redwood trees. Each site has a fire pit, so we ate dinner, made a fire, and popped out the s'mores! The picture below is the view from outside my tent.

The next day we woke up and headed over to Point Lobos State Reserve. Point Lobos has everything I could have asked for. It has the beautiful beaches, stunning rock cliffs, intensely vibrant vegetation, harbor seals, hiking trails, tidepooling, the works. We hiked around Point Lobos for the whole day, probably covering 6-8 miles. Here is a map of the trails, with the photo source found here.

We parked at Piney Woods, then headed over towards Cypress Grove Trail where we circled around the Allan Memorial Grove. From there, we returned to the information station and headed on North Shore Trail, towards Cannery Point. We ate lunch at Cannery Point, and then made our way to the Whaler's Cabin. We had such a treat seeing harbor seals in their birthing environment. We saw around 30 harbor seals, and most of the babies were still nursing and playing with their mothers. We watched the harbor seals for at least 40 minutes...we couldn't walk away!

At the Whaler's Cabin we learned that the area had been previously inhabited by Portuguese whalers, Chinese fishermen, and Japanese abalone divers. That was really amazing to learn and to realize that so many people from different backgrounds have called that area "home" and have survived off of the land. From there, we started on Granite Point Trail and made our way to The Pit. We scrambled down to the beach and spent 30 minutes in silent reflection.

We walked back on Granite Point Trail, continued onto Cabin Trail, which turned into North Shore Trail. From there, we took a left onto Whalers Knoll Trail and hiked in the woods for a while. We made it to the next intersection with North Shore Trail, and followed that path to the information station.

We got back to the information station at around 2:30, which was low tide! Of course, we had to go tidepooling. We walked down to The Slot and Weston Beach and found the tidepools waiting for us. I found a lot of sea anemones and hermit crabs. One of the students found the crab in the photo below.

It was a magical day. We headed back to camp, cooked dinner, made a fire, and had some more s'mores ;-) ! The next morning we packed up and walked over to a redwood grove by the campsite. It was a beautiful ring of redwoods, some still charred from a fire in the past. We gathered underneath this ring of my favorite trees and reflected on our journies. I then led us in a meditation. With minds clear, and hearts filled, we waved goodbye to the beautiful campground, and goodbye to the magnificence that is Big Sur.