What’s up, everybody? Philcaela here :)
And we are in Big Sur.
So today, we’re gonna show you our favorite spots around here but at the same time, we’re
gonna show you “Behind the Scenes” of what happened on our trip today.
Unfortunately, you wanna say it?
I lost my drone.
And… you’ll see the story.
Let’s go :’(
Start off the morning with a 2-hour drive from San Francisco to Monterey, we’re now
getting brunch at a place called “Schooners” it’s in the Monterey Plaza Hotel and this
is a great pit stop on the way down to Big Sur because it’s right on the way and it’s
a really, really beautiful area to explore.
You can go to the aquarium, I saw people kayaking while we were eating brunch, I’m sure you
can do standup paddle boarding and other water activities.
You can definitely spend a day in Monterey, there’s so much to do here, but for us,
it’s just a good pit stop to break up the driving.
Great pit stop for brunch, coffee, whatever, just a one hour stop or two.
And now we’re heading down to Big Sur.
About a 30-minute drive south from Monterey, we’ve passed Carmel and now we’re getting
into Big Sur, you’re gonna see so many beautiful spots where you can stop your car and just
take in the natural beauty as you drive down.
This is Garrapata State Park next to Calla Lily Valley and you actually have some really
beautiful turquoise-looking water and a nice beach down here.
Garrapata State beach is really beautiful, it’s really easy to get to, and it’s a
really short walk from where the cars are.
And as you can see behind me, you have crashing waves, light blue water, and sand, so it’s
a really, really great place to come.
Don’t know that you’d wanna come here and swim because it’s very cold and windy,
as you can tell.
There’s actually a sign to warn you to not swim, I think it’s because the current can
get really high out of nowhere.
Yeah I don’t see anyone in the water right now, but it’s nice to look at!
So a very popular stop in Carmel-by-the-Sea is Point Lobos State Reserve, it’s really
beautiful, we’ve been there once, there’s hiking.
But the parking lot was really full and it’s usually really, really popular, so we decided
to give it a skip today and we’re hitting up a lot of other spots.
Otherwise if you have time to check it out, go for it!
So our next stop, which is probably one of the most popular bridges here, is the Bixby
Bridge.
It’s beautiful, on one side you have really pretty water and on the other side you have
a massive bridge.
As you can tell, there’s so many people here because it’s a really popular spot
to stop and take a lot of photos.
Parking may be tough, it’s only limited to street parking.
I actually went down to the ledge, it looks really scary, but it’s actually not that
scary in real life.
And by the time you get out to Bixby Bridge, you’re definitely going to lose signal,
so we’d really recommend getting offline maps on Google Maps before you come here.
Sometimes the best part of Big Sur, or coming down the 1 Highway, is that there’re so
many vista points that sometimes you don’t even need to do research while you’re coming
down here.
If you see something you like, just pull over, take a stop and enjoy the view, it’s beautiful!
It’s what we did here.
You could have a couple spots that you wanna visit in mind, but you’ll find plenty of
things that you wanna do as you go on the way.
Here, there is the Pfeiffer State Park Vista Point and we had not planned coming here.
There’s a nice area here to park your car and it’s a beautiful view.
And our next stop that is probably one of the most popular spots in Big Sur, and what
you’ve seen on Instagram and videos, is McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer State Park.
It’s definitely a short hike to go down, just a little bit, but it’s actually really
hot today so we’ve decided to just stay up here.
And you can still see the views from up here, there’s not much difference going down there,
but if you wanna go for a little hike, this is definitely a great place to go for a small
hike.
And one thing to note is that you can’t actually go down to the beach here, it’s
not accessible, so you’re gonna get a beautiful view from the sides or beautiful view from
the trail down there, but you can’t go down to the beach unfortunately.
And honestly, I think it’s better that way, because the beach is really beautiful and
really untouched.
McWay Falls is really, really popular and so is Pfeiffer State Park, so parking is actually
pretty tough around here.
If you see street parking available around here, just grab it, take a short walk because
it’s definitely gonna be worth it because of the beautiful view and also how tough parking
can be.
We’re stopped by at COAST Big Sur, it’s a boutique/gallery/cafe, so we came in for
snacks.
It’s like not your traditional bread, it’s made out of seeds, we have some soft serve,
and we got some cold cuts.
And quick story time, when we were at McWay Falls earlier, I was trying to fly the drone
to get some really nice footage of the falls and before I could even get it over the water,
the wind blew my drone actually into a tree so it’s still up there right now.
Long story short: Phil got his drone stuck in a tree, and he’s actually flying it in
a place you’re not supposed to, it’s against the law, because it’s a protected state
park, and now it’s stuck in a tree and I have to walk all the way down to the trail
to somehow get it off the tree, I don’t know!
Unfortunately, the drone is still in the tree, now Phil’s downloading all the rest of the
videos, and probably gonna leave after that.
Rest in peace…
It got stuck up there at like 4PM and it’s now 6PM, so we waited around for about 2 hours
and it’s still stuck in the tree, it’s hanging by a limb, but we’re gonna go back
and check to see if it’s still there.
Not to get too far off with the story here, today’s video is about what you can do with
one day in Big Sur as a day trip from San Francisco, but we’re gonna go ahead and
show you the outcome of that.
We’re actually gonna head back to McWay Falls to see if maybe the drone’s gonna
fall out or at least get footage of it, ummmm lol hope this goes well!
There’s the drone!
Really high up, so it’s not a good idea to climb up there — I couldn’t climb up
there if I wanted to!
It is what it is, you know, but hopefully it comes out!
Earlier the wind was really strong, so the drone actually moved down a little bit, it
was way higher and it was kinda hard to see, but now it’s very visible.
We tied a rock to the rope and when Phil threw it…
Day of struggles.
Sun’s going down as you can tell, but we’re determined.
We have the footage, but it’d be nice to have the drone back, we’ll see.
We got help from some people who, they started trying to throw rocks, we made no one was
down there, like we made sure people were being safe.
There were a couple times that we actually did hit the drone, but it’s just really
snagged on there.
Luckily it’s not over a walkway or anything, it’s over a bunch of shrubs, so when it
does fall, because of the wind, inevitably, it will, it’ll fall into some shrubs, so
we don’t really have much choice but to leave it here.
That being said, it was still a really beautiful day in Big Sur, this is definitely super annoying,
but it’s not a big deal.
Big Sur was beautiful, we had a good time today, even though we didn’t get to hit
up quite as many spots as we would have wanted to in Big Sur, still a pretty good day overall.
I definitely wish we covered more spots, but unfortunately we ran out of time just because
we spent hours looking for the drone.
Anywhere you go here, it’s beautiful.
If you haven’t already, SUBSCRIBE for more travel videos coming soon.
See ya next time!
Bye :)