Day 1: The Sunset Coast

For the last big trip of my residency years, Jane and I chose something a little closer to home: a one-way drive from San José to Los Angeles, winding down the continent’s Sunset Coast. Along the way, we would spend three days exploring what the Spanish explorers called “El País Grande del Sur” - the big country to the south of Monterrey, a beautiful place defined more than anything by its contrasts: inaccessible yet teeming with visitors, worldly yet utterly mystical - a borderland where the rocky, reef-strewn tide pools of the Pacific soar precipitously into the peaks of the Santa Lucia Range and the vast Ventana Wilderness. On the fourth day, we would drive down the Central Coast of California, to the outskirts of the L.A. megalopolis, a homecoming of sorts. The fifth and last day would see us boarding a boat from Ventura to Santa Cruz Island, to explore the largest of the Channel Islands before braving the evening traffic toward Orange County.

In hindsight, I have to wonder why we chose this trip, one among many possibilities in the planning folder. It wasn’t for novelty: I’d visited the Sur on a road trip with family as recently as the summer between college and medical school, and Jane and I had spent a day on Catalina Island as Ocean Bowl teammates in our junior year of high school, not far from the Santa Barbara Channel. For photography? Probably not - as much as I love a dramatic seascape, we ultimately chose California over two other options that would have been compositional gold - a return to Scotland for its Outer Hebrides, or a trekking tour for autumn colors in the Patagonian Andes. Of course, there was the issue of family. Aside from attending weddings or planning a wedding of our own, neither of us had spent any extended time in California since 2016. And yes, there is still joy to be found in each reunion with in-laws, relatives, and old friends - even as we silence the little voice that tells us, truly, that no amount of time spent together can erase the lives grown while apart. That “home” cannot be found where the heart no longer is.

Maybe in the end, for lack of a better explanation, this trip was some sort of last, heroic attempt to fall back in love with the state that claims both of our childhoods. A subconscious effort to let visual and experiential beauty persuade us, perhaps, to return - in spite of all that we ‘d seen, lived, and loved in the intervening decade, and all that remains to be seen in the coming years. Were it only so simple.

An early morning flight from Baltimore and a connection in Detroit leave us in San José by mid-morning, Pacific time. We’re fully rested, each rolling a single suitcase with a few changes of clothes, wearing partly empty backpacks with hiking gear and some work material for our time at home. No check-ins, no passports. Truth be told, we’re unused to such a casual pace on day one of vacation. We amble out of the airport terminal and catch a shuttle to the rental car office. Jane watches, bemused, as the desk clerk slowly, slowly… slowly processes our reservation while an irritable line of customers piles up behind me. On taking the elevator up to the parking garage, we discover that my economy-size car has been upgraded to a full-size, 4x4 black Jeep Wrangler, the largest car I’ve ever driven. There’s a full step to climb into the cab of the vehicle; it takes me several attempts - and a few days of habit - to consistently wind up in the driver’s seat facing forward. We ease the car out of the parking garage and into the California sunshine, following the highway south of San José through the rolling green pastures of the Santa Clara Valley. As Jane and I search for something good on the radio, the road takes us past carefully irrigated farmlands and oak-lined creeks, cutting through coastal hills to arrive at the seaside just north of Monterrey an hour later.

We continue through the town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, stopping at its Spanish-styled Safeway grocery store to buy everything we need for the next three days: a bag of oranges, a bunch of bananas, six-packs of chocolate milk and apple juice, a few bags of pea crisp snacks, two loaves of focaccia bread ( jalapeño-cheddar and olive-parmesan), and the fixings for three nights of instant noodle dinners (complete with cans of corn, spinach, carrots and peas, tuna, and my favorite - a hunk of low-sodium Spam). Fully stocked, we continue south, bypassing Point Lobos State Natural Reserve (which is completely full, even at midday on a Tuesday). Past the gated seaside communities of the Carmel Highlands, Highway 1 swings toward the ocean and hugs the rocky shoreline. For the next 70 miles, it holds tightly to its Pacific embrace, climbing, dipping, and swerving along high cliff edges in one of the most harrowing, most beautiful stretches of road in the United States. We follow the road into the fabled land of Big Sur.

For our first stop of the trip, we leave the car on the west side of the road across from Soberanes Canyon, and spend the afternoon exploring the foot trails that crisscross Soberanes Point. It is springtime in the Sur; the weather is brilliant and breezy, and the lush hillsides are covered by blooming coastal wildflowers - quite different from the tawny, bronzed ranges that I remember from our family trip in 2012. As I point my camera along the wave-battered shoreline, I’m greeted by a world of color: the cerulean blue of the Pacific on a sunny day; the bright golden bunches of mustard flowers; the rust-red and olive-green hues of the succulent ice plant, its carpets spreading along the cliffs; all punctuated by clusters of delicate morning glory and stands of audacious poppy flowers. We walk along the coast, through a grove of cypress trees, and out along the bluffs to the seaward edge of Soberanes Point. Through her binoculars, Jane watches seabirds diving from the top of Lobos Rock, and spots a mother-cub pair of sea otters bobbing placidly in the cove. They get spooked when Jane calls me over; the tiny brown heads vanish underwater, re-appearing in the distant surf a full minute later.

Coming back from the Point, Jane and I circle the base of the hillock known to locals as the Whale’s Hump before we return to the car. We continue south, stopping for a brief walk down Doud Creek to the surf at Garrapata Beach. We’re a few weeks too late for the lily flowers in this narrow valley, which are well past wilting on the stem, but the abundance of spring wildflowers is more than adequate compensation. Further south, we stop at the roadside above Notley’s Landing to re-create a shot I took in 2012, of a sea arch with the Rocky Creek Bridge in the distance. We drive over the famous Bixby Creek Bridge, nowadays more of a spectacle for its throng of selfie-snapping tourists than for the grandeur of its architecture. We take our own selfie a little further down the road, at the high overlook of Hurricane Point.

For our last roadside stop of the afternoon, I set up the tripod on a shoulder of the road overlooking the Little Sur River Beach. This beautiful viewpoint, though enclosed by a private property fence, is a terrific place to work at sunset, with its sinuous river curve, its picturesque dunes and driftwood, and a foreground of vibrant pink ice plant flowers. Jane and I sit on the asphalt as I shoot a timelapse into the early evening. Feeling worn from a long day of travel, we leave a few minutes before sundown proper, speeding south past the Point Sur Lighthouse, past the green cattle pastures of the Sur Ranch, and past orderly rows of Monterrey pines silhouetted by the setting sun. The highway turns inland here, entering Big Sur Valley, with its eternal shroud of mist and its ancient groves of coastal redwood.

At the Big Sur Lodge, our destination for the next three nights, we check in at the main office, receiving our cabin key and a complimentary bottle of red wine (ultimately passed on to Jane’s parents a few days later). As we slowly wind up the narrow lane road toward our lodging in the twilight, dodging tree trunks fatter than our Jeep, the scene reminds of something out of Jurassic Park. Fortunately, we crest the hilltop to find not a twenty-foot-tall predatory reptile, but rather a line of cabins set pleasantly against a towering canopy of redwood trees. We park outside our cabin; I unload the car while Jane boils water for an instant ramen dinner, which we enjoy while the light fades from the evening sky.

Day 2: El País Grande

The next morning, we’re up early and on the road again, heading back north to Soberanes Point in the deep blue of the pre-dawn light. Hemmed in as it is by the towering Santa Lucia Range to its immediate east, Big Sur is no trivial place for sunrise photography. In my pre-trip research, I had a hard time finding suggestions for sunrise spots and compositions. Even longtime area photographers seemed to suggest that the Pacific coastline, though rife with sunset opportunities, would be a fool’s errand at daybreak, when its seascapes would be shadowed by the mountains and the ubiquitous layer of marine fog. Short of climbing the range (which Jane and I had neither the time nor the equipment to do), we would have to get creative. Fortunately, after a lot of time spent simulating sunrises in Google Earth, I hit upon a location that I hoped would provide interest: the top of the Whale’s Hump across from Soberanes Canyon, an elevated location between the mountains and the sea. Just a brief climb from the trailhead below, its north-northeast-facing ridge would provide a leading line into the frame and, if conditions were ideal, would be backed by early morning sidelight streaming over the saddle above Soberanes Canyon. Quite happily for us, the location worked perfectly.

After about half an hour of driving and a quick roadside stop above the beach near Point Sur, we park on a dirt shoulder at the foot of the hill, just a few hundred yards south from the cypress grove we passed through on the previous day. A short trail takes us up a well-maintained series of dirt steps, under the branches of a sprawling Monterrey pine, and to the ridge at the top of the hump. We arrive just as the sun is beginning to crest the range, its light diffused by low-hanging clouds on the seaward slopes of the mountains, so that the canyon below is bathed in an ethereal golden glow. Jane climbs to the summit while I take photos of her from the opposite end of the hill; after awhile, we switch positions, and I photograph her facing southward, framed by the open ocean. From the top of the Whale’s Hump, we gaze down on a terrific panorama of the rocky coves and coastal bluffs that we explored the previous afternoon. As the dawn filters through the mountains, it strikes the headlands in patches of dappled light - verdant greens and golds appear on the land, as if lit by a spotlight. Truly one of the loveliest sights of our entire trip, and a sunrise well worth the effort and planning that went into it.

The morning has arrived in full by the time we return to the car. Jane feeds me pea snacks as we drive back south, stopping just before the entrance to Big Sur Valley at Andrew Molera State Park, a sprawling coastal acreage of campgrounds and meadows, wind-swept bluffs, and oak groves abutting the Big Sur River as it flows toward the tidal lagoon where it meets the sea. Unfortunately, most of the trails to the west are inaccessible to us, as the footbridge across the river has not yet been installed for the season. We make do with a short stroll down the Bobcat Trail, a flat dirt path along the eastern bank of the river, which takes us past the derelict buildings of the old Molera Ranch - now converted into a historic museum and a headquarters for the Ventana Wildlife Society. Jane and I spend the morning birding and taking photos of the ranch’s beautiful, century-old oak trees, which stand majestically against hillsides of coastal scrub beneath a brilliant sun - the classic chaparral landscape that so completely embodies coastal California.

Afterwards, we drive the short distance back to our lodge at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. Leaving our car near the main office, we set off on the Valley View Trail, which follows Pfeiffer Creek through groves of coastal redwoods before switchbacking to a ridgeline east of the valley. Jane and I have some fun posing with these thousand-year-old organisms. The trees thrive in the Sur’s heavy winter rains and temperate, year-round fog, which condenses and provides moisture all along the height of their colossal boughs. At one bend in the path, Jane poses for a photo inside the trunk of a burnt-out redwood. The result is comically Lilliputian; wearing her field hat and pink windbreaker, she looks like a Columbia-sponsored human field mouse, huddled at the base of a hollow oak tree.

As the trail turns uphill, we leave behind the temperate rainforest world of redwoods, ferns, and clover carpets, and ascend into the sage scrub hillsides of the coastal range. Though the path is steep, the transition feels quite gradual, as the high branches and rich sienna bark of the redwoods continue to greet us switchback after switchback. Panting for air, we eventually make it above the treetops; the climb flattens into a ridge walk along the eastern rim of the valley. A mile later, we reach a west-facing overlook that serves as a breezy rest stop and turnaround point. The view across the valley, especially at mid-day, is nothing to write home about (dominated as it is by the highway), but there is a lovely glimmer of the blue Pacific to our northwest. As Jane and I pose for a selfie, I tear a hole in the butt of my hiking pants on a perfectly positioned sharp rock. Despite my wife’s protestations, I refuse to wear a different pair of pants for the remainder of our trip (or indeed, for the rest of our time with family in California).

After a water break and a snack, we retrace our steps back down the trail and return to the main lodge, where I order a vanilla ice cream float with orange cream soda; Jane has an iced tea. We also pick up our first of three (!) fridge magnets for this trip - an adorable image of Smokey the Bear with a beady-eyed fox and fluttery-lashed doe, presumably all smiling because of their confidence in our ability to not incinerate their natural habitat while we thoroughly trespass upon, trample, and develop it for our recreation. A high standard for ecological harmony. After we enjoy our drinks, we retreat to the cabin to eat lunch and settle in for an afternoon nap.

We leave the cabin again in the late afternoon, heading south to explore more of the winding coastline before we have to hustle for a sunset position at the famously picturesque McWay Cove. At the crest of Partington Ridge, we leave the car on a dirt shoulder and make our way down the canyon along a steep trail. At the bottom, the path levels off and follows the bank of a small creek before splitting toward a pair of rocky coves. Jane and I visit the southern cove first, which is accessed through a tunnel through the hillside - constructed in the late 1800s by homesteader John Partington’s for his oak harvesting business. Today, the landing is empty but for a few iron hoops drilled into the rock, and a solitary wooden bench looking over the water. We sit for awhile and are approached by an overly curious California gull, whose diet probably includes fish as well as sandwich scraps. On our way back, we visit the other cove, which is accessed by a narrow path through brush and ivy. The waves are booming on the boulders here, knocking over fancifully built rock cairns as the tide rises. As the afternoon sun vanishes behind the pines on the cliff above us, we make our way back up the canyon.

A short distance south on the road, we stop at a cliff-top vantage point with a classic Big Sur view: a winding coastline dotted by stately sea arches and hidden coves, with rolling foothills receding into a mist of marine fog. For a rare moment, I wish I had a camera lens with longer focal length, so that I could zoom in on the many lovely details in this landscape.

Past Partington Point, we come to a long and crowded shoulder in the road overlooking McWay Cove. As Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park was heavily affected by mudslides and fires in 2018, the parking lot and short trail that lead to a vantage point of McWay Falls are still closed, and the roadside overlook is our only option to catch a glimpse of the famous waterfall. Truth be told, having seen the falls from the lower trail in 2012, I actually prefer the higher angle of view, which affords a more balanced composition of the entire cove, the waterfall, the surrounding cliffs covered with pine trees (to me, actually the most affecting and defining characteristic of the scene), and the blue horizon beyond. Fortunately, we arrive well before sunset, so I am able to get my tripod squared away in a nice corner of the overlook before a flood of photographers, smartphone wielders, and drone enthusiasts (seriously, so many drones) descends upon the scene. I take a timelapse of the changing colors and light, which dance across the falls and their surrounding cliffs as the sun falls in the west.

Leaving the waterfall overlook, Jane and I move the tripod thirty yards up the road to the side of our car, where there is a lovely, north-facing view toward Partington Ridge, with layers of coves and promontories in between. As the sun sets, it casts shadows across the beaches and cliffs, making for a mesmerizing scene full of depth and detail - honestly, a more impressive subject than McWay Cove itself. As is the case for so many high-traffic photography locations, we have this second overlook completely to ourselves, even though the scrum above the falls is just a few yards down the road. I take another timelapse here before we pack up the tripod and retrace our route toward home. As we enter Big Sur Valley from the south, from a high bend in the road, we’re surprised by a gorgeous sight: the day’s last light on the valley walls to our northwest. I quickly swing the car into a shoulder and hop out to take a photo from this impromptu overlook, just moments before the light fades. The glimpse of it is tantalizing enough that we decide to return here for sunset the next day - though the weather and lighting conditions would prove to be quite different on our third and final day in the area. For now, we make the brief drive back to the lodge, where we enjoy another ramen dinner before heading to bed early, in anticipation of a long day of exploration in the southern reaches of the Sur.

Day 3: A Land of Fog and Flowers

We awaken to an eerie sight outside of our cabin door: fog as thick as pea-soup, with barely enough visibility to see our parked Jeep across the road. For the landscape photographer, a foggy morning is bittersweet - no chance for a decent sunrise shoot, but also less pressure to perform, and more opportunity to breathe deeply, eat a hearty breakfast, and enjoy the moment. Besides, we’ve seen plenty of fog throughout our northern and Chesapeake travels, and we know that it tends to be more ephemeral than any other weather condition I could shoot in. Just an hour or two before the rising sun burns away the mist and leaves us with either gorgeous, sunlit scenery or dramatic cloud-swept landscapes, right? Boy, were we ever so wrong.

Fog along this part of the California coastline is not like fog anywhere else, we gradually realize after we hop in the car and begin our journey south. I’m driving at a snail’s crawl (thankfully, no commuters or other cars on the highway this early in the morning), barely able to see the center stripe of the highway, let alone the next bend in the road, the sheer precipice beyond it, or the pounding waves that would greet us below if I failed to react to either in time. We drive for miles and miles, passing by overlook after overlook that I diligently marked off in my research - all of them choked with fog. Nothing to see, here.

With my hopes for shooting sunrise at Partington Point (or any other point) dashed, I figure we’ll continue south, until either the fog relents, or we reach one of several trails of interest where I’d planned to spend some time. Somewhere twenty miles later, nearing the southern boundaries of the Big Sur coastline, we finally come to understand that the fog has no plans to go anywhere. It just lives here, and here’s where it’s gonna be. This dense marine layer, which can last for days or even weeks, is a uniquely Big Sur phenomenon, an ugly lovechild of the sun, the ocean, the temperate year-round weather, and the soaring walls of the coastal range. At least the redwoods are happy.

At Pacific Valley, we pause the southward exodus and park beside a ranger station on the landward side of the highway. From here, we cross the road, pass through a cattle gate, and embark on a short walk across an expanse of coastal bluffs. Though we are in a completely different time, place, landscape, and biome, the grey weather and the entirely flat, straight trail, receding inscrutably into the horizon, remind me instantly of our walk to the downed naval plane in the south of Iceland, over five years earlier. Having made the connection with Sólheimasandur, I become acutely aware of this dreary and lonesome but beautiful place; the wind howling through the valley and the waves crashing in the distance only serve to complete the illusion. It is an utterly different experience than I would have had if we visited this stretch of seashore on a radiant, clear day - one of the reasons why I so love being in nature, and why I use landscape photography as an excuse to do it.

A mile in, the grass path brings us to the edge of the sea. Once the tripod is set, Jane sets off walking north along the bluffs; I take photos of her standing on the distant cliffs, enveloped in the gloom of the mist, with the roiled Pacific Ocean thundering onto the gravel beach far below her.

Back at the car, we resume our drive to the south, passing by Sand Dollar Beach and Jade Cove in short order. The morning is well underway now, and it has become clear that the coastal fog is here for good. With the whole day ahead and not much else available to us in terms of seascapes, Jane and I decide to beeline all the way south out of Big Sur in order to spend extra time at the elephant seal colony at Piedras Blancas (photos in the next post). We pass additional viewpoints that would have been lovely in better visibility, including the sea stacks off of Cape San Martin, and the pine-covered ridges at Ragged Point. South of Ragged Point, the winding cliffside highway finally makes a long, gentle descent to the floor of a broad coastal valley, which is carved by the water of San Carporforo Creek. We stop to look for a view with the creek flowing toward the ocean, but not finding much of a trail or a leading line, we continue on our way. The Pacific Coast Highway straightens now as it follows the coastline south; the view along this stretch of road, looking toward the foothills in the north, is another signature landscape of the central Californian coast, but in the fog, there is nothing to be seen but two lanes of asphalt and some surrounding greenery. A few miles more of easy, fast driving, and we arrive at Piedras Blancas (“White Rocks”), home to the largest mainland colony of elephant seals in the world.

The northern elephant seal is one of the stranger creatures I’ve ever watched in its natural habitat. Its population ranges along the entire Pacific coast of North America, from Vancouver Island down to northern Mexico, but the greatest number of these massive, sea-going blubber-tanks is concentrated on the rocky shorelines of central California - and more specifically, on the few miles of beach immediately surrounding Piedras Blancas. Though they spend the majority of the year out in the open ocean, underwater, and hunting or eating, we have arrived in the spring molting season, when female and juvenile males come ashore to shed their outer layer of fur and skin. The resulting sight is a strange one - thousands of fat, fetid mammals, spread over every square foot of the beach (in many cases, unhappily piled atop one another), each gigantic body flaky and rashy enough to make any self-respecting skin care professional shudder in fear. The fully reclined seals intermittently reach back to scratch their itchy backs using the little finger articulations on their flippers - an oddly anthropomorphic action that I certainly perform on a nightly basis. The air is filled with the constant sound of grunts, groans, and sighs (whatever sound you might imagine a two-ton creature to make when it is imposed upon by another two-ton creature). Accompanying these, there are frequent bouts of loud honking and roaring, emitted usually by two males with their heads reared back, their eyes bloodshot and widely glaring at one another. I presume that this is a gendered act of territoriality - the elephant seal equivalent of two drivers cursing and gesturing wildly at each other after a fender-bender in an intersection, or two drunks ineffectually shoving each other in an alleyway behind a small-town bar.

It’s Jane’s first time seeing these creatures, and she walks along the the top of the beach, from one pile of seals to another, mesmerized. She most enjoys watching the seal pups (just born in the winter), whose plump, shiny bodies are still small enough to appeal to our conventional sense of cuteness. An even funnier sight is the occasional seal’s attempt to return to the sea; though it can reach graceful cruising speeds of several miles per hour in open water, the elephant seal’s mobility on land is pitiful. Imagine a thousand-pound sack of rendered candlewax attempting to move across a beach using two hand trowels, stopping for a minutes-long breather every couple of feet.

After spending most of the morning with the elephant seals, we drive a few extra miles into the town of San Simeon to catch a bathroom break and to visit the Friends of the Elephant Seal visitor center and souvenir shop, which is located on the second floor of totally deserted shopping plaza. Here, we pick up the second of this trip’s 3 fridge magnets, a close-up portrait of an adorably smiling elephant seal. From San Simeon, we reverse course and make the long drive back to the Sur to finish exploring the southern part of that famous coastline. In hindsight, we might have been spared from backtracking by spending one less night in Big Sur, in favor of exploring the environs of San Simeon, Cambria, and Morro Bay - iconic central Californian settings in their own right. But I have no qualm with how things turned out, considering that our next two locations for the day - a wildflower-laden spur trail from the roadside near Pacific Valley, and a 2-mile trail in Limekiln State Park - bore some of my favorite photos from the entire trip.

During our long drive back up into the mountains, we note that omnipresent fog remains thick as ever, but it now has a luminous quality to it, lit from above by the midday sun. The entire coast seems to be tinted sapphire, held within a massive lightbox that casts a soft glow on the land for miles on end. These are horrible conditions for shooting sweeping, dramatic landscapes, but wonderful conditions for plant, flower, and nature photography. Practiced after a spring of photographing Baltimore’s procession of flowering trees, I turn my camera to our closer surroundings, stopping by the roadside whenever convenient to capture the beautiful spring colors of California’s wildflowers. At Sand Dollar Beach, we discover that neither of us has cash for the parking fee, so we instead move up the road, just south of our last walk in Pacific Valley, and take a short hike among the flowers and across the bluffs. Jane walks ahead to another cliff-top view over the roaring ocean, while I take photos of morning glory, thistle, mustard, and poppy.

Further north, we leave the coastal bluffs behind and re-enter the land of harrowing sandstone cliffs, steep creeks and canyons, and boulder-strewn mountainsides. Here, we turn off the road to visit Limekiln State Park, a campground and network of trails among some of the loveliest redwood groves on the planet, all nestled against the base of imposing Cone Peak. After paying a small day-use fee, we set off on a walking trail that winds through the redwood trees, climbing as it follows Limekiln Creek upstream. The foggy weather works wonders here in the forest, negating the usual harsh glare-and-shadow contrast that would be present beneath a bright afternoon sun. Instead, working with a soft light source and a cleaner range of luminosity, the camera is free to capture a sumptuous amount of color and detail - the rich, textured mahogany of the redwoods’ bark, and the luscious, cool greens of the carpeting clovers, ivies, and ferns.

The trail upriver toward Limekiln Falls is mostly easy and flat, and the cool, moist air is perfect for forest walking. About a mile in, we come to a log bridge crossing over the creek; Jane goes first, accompanied by a troupe of elementary school children, who stop and watch as I embarrassingly tiptoe my way across the log, with my camera in one hand and tripod in the other. Up a few switchbacks at the next crossing, I elicit a chorus of conspiratorial ooh’s and aah’s when I skip the line and wade across the ankle-deep creek in my boots. Better to be wet, than to fall and be wet, I tell Jane when she looks inquiringly at me. We continue this way up a series of smaller falls, including one interesting section where we shimmy along the side of a fallen redwood to climb directly up the creek. At the top, the path levels out, and we come into view of 100-foot-tall Limekiln Falls, where the creek drops from its course along the flank of Cone Peak into the valley below. I take a photo of Jane standing in front of the falls before schoolchildren overtake us and go clambering all over the wet rock. We retrace our way back down the creek, stopping frequently to admire the gorgeous light and scenery of this sylvan paradise. Nearly back at the campground, we encounter a birder (you can identify them by their sun hats, khaki shorts, and oversized binoculars) who has evidently been doing much more admiring of the scenery than we have; he has barely walked a quarter-mile in the time that we walked two. “This place is unbelievable,” he says to us as we pass, as if he simply has to tell someone, anyone. “I could spend the entire day here!” We answer with a smile and a nod. I take more photos of the winding creek and the redwood trees before we return to the car.

Back on the highway, we continue north along the winding coastline, driving through the ever lighter and more ethereal fog. Near Gamboa Point, we finally get enough of a clearing that I am able to photograph Big Creek Bridge in the distance, with a foreground of thistle flowers and turquoise-blue water. The rest of the drive is uneventful; we eventually return to Big Sur Valley, where I hop into the Big Sur Deli to grab a corn dog and an ice cream bar for a late lunch. Jane opts to return to the cabin and finish the rest of our focaccia bread with fruit. I take an afternoon nap while Jane takes the Jeep to the main lodge for WiFi access, in order to respond to a few work-related emails.

In the evening, we return a short distance south on the highway to the valley overlook where stopped the day before. I set up for a long sunset timelapse here, which turns out to be interesting not for the quality of the light (which is fairly morose), but for the bank of fog that gradually rolls into the valley from its seaward side to the north. The mist and clouds gradually approach us over the course of the hour, until the view is all but blotted out by a tinted sheet of white. Not much of a golden hour, but nevertheless an interesting subject to shoot. Jane and I take a selfie here at the edge of the valley, before retiring to the cabin for our last night in Big Sur.