Jun 7

Jun 7 Big Sur, California

California’s paradise 🌊

After moving back home from Paris to California, it wasn’t long before I was missing the adventure of traveling around Europe every weekend. So my best friends and I decided to camp in Big Sur for a weekend to do something different than our typical 9:00 - 5:00 jobs.

*Since Big Sur is such a popular destination, the campground spots are in very high demand so you need to plan and get your space months in advance before they sell out. There are boutique hotels you can stay at if you do not want to camp*

Day One: As our luck would have it, there was a huge landslide in Big Sur, only nights before we left for our trip. Luckily, this wasn’t a problem for our trip till we were arriving to the campsite…. Our 7 hour drive to Big Sur from Orange County felt eternal and it seemed like we were going to make it all the way to Northern California when we actually only made it to the middle of California. Once we got off the freeway and started going towards the coast to Big Sur we weren’t able to take PCH because of the landslide, so we had to get to the campsite through a skinny, winding, and elevated dirt path that was intended to be a two-way street, but really only seemed to fit our car. It was a very hectic 20 minutes to say the least, with 3 girls screaming and freaking out whenever we turned a blind corner and were expecting to crash with another car. But once the chaos in the car was over, we looked out our car window and saw the most beautiful coastline, the hills were filled with trees and the rugged edge of the coastline cut into the ocean making the most breathtaking hues of blue. We set up camp at our site with a couple tents and had hotdogs and smores for dinner. At night, everything was silent and the only sound you could hear was the ocean’s waves crashing into the edge of the coastline…… it was complete and utter peace

Day Two: The next morning we got up early and set out to see more of Big Sur’s coastline. Because of the landslide, there were several instafamous spots in Big Sur that were unaccessible like McWay Falls, but luckily for us there weren’t any cars allowed on the road. So we walked on PCH without a car in sight and creepily enough, had the road to ourselves. Once we got to the landslide, we were shocked to see how this chunk of land and PCH had been stripped from the cliff and dropped into the Pacific. When we were looking down the cliff at how the soil was making the ocean murky and brown, we spotted tiny otters in the kelp forests hanging out, just like on Planet Blue! After that, we headed down to Sand Dollar Beach that was a black pebble beach unlike the beaches we have in Southern California. During that summer, there had been an unusual amount of shark sightings and till this day I swear I saw a fin cruising right beyond the break. After that we headed back to the campsite for our last routine dinner of hotdogs and smores and got ready to head out the next morning.

Big Sur was such a peaceful and serene experience, it was so nice to be secluded from the world for a weekend without any phone reception. Definitely a great trip to do when you’re in need of some peace & quiet.