Camping at Big Sur

After going out Friday night with damo while he was in town, and not having any plans for the rest of the weekend, a call from James and Junko seeing if Lisa and I wanted to come camping down at Big Sur was very welcome. (wasn't that a long sentence)

After some shenanigans getting damo to the airport on sunday morning, Lisa and I, James and Junko and Elaine all took off down to Big Sur, crammed into Junko's Mercury Mystique. What a car. We left behind all the luxuries to make it fit, then I at lest slept all the way to Monterey. We got some food for lunch and breakfast, and then continued on down to the camp at Andrew Molera State Park. I was quite surprised to find that they still had plenty of sites, even half way through a holiday weekend.

We set up in squirrel villa, and put our food in an unused food locker on another camp site. (Our site didn't have a food locker, and we didn't have an esky to put it all in to keep the critters out) This proved to be a bad choice.

We hopped back in the car from here, and drove down to McMay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. This place is amazing. I'd seen a picture of it once before, but it truly is spectacular. And sooo easy to get to. After some pictures here, we headed back up the coast to go to a beach. Pfeiffer Beach was full, so we decided we'd just go back to our own camp and walk out to Molera Pt and the beach there.

The beach was fun. We took a couple of bottles of wine, and stacked up rocks, and put up with James throwing rocks at them like a little boy, and eventually decided that it was time to walk back, if we were to get up to Monterrey in time to watch the fireworks.

We were running a bit short on time, and ended up having Round Table Pizza for dinner, which was fine, it was pretty cheap, and then the fireworks damnwell started early. We had been told 9:30, but at 9:15, we started hearing them, and ran out down towards the wharf. Took a bunch of photos, and watched them all. Quite nice. I'd never tried taking pictures of fireworks before.

Drive back was uneventful. Except we'd left all our lights back at camp, so the walk back in was a touch exciting. We go over to get some snacks, and lo and behold, there's a padlock on the foodbox. And a tent beside it. A little bit paranoid, but whatever, I guess we'll have to get our food in the morning.

Actually no. These paranoid little bitches camped beside us apparently gave our food and containers to the ranger, and then put their own in, and locked it. I was asleep, but apparently they weren't the least bit apologetic. They'll get what they deserve somewhere down the road. They couldn't have tried to make room very hard. Sure, we had a fair bit of stuff in there, but there were other boxes around too. And they had to walk out to get rid of it! Whackos. The ranger wasn't very apologetic either, we should have left a note. Like it wasn't obvious that it was very recent food. It was hardly a week old or anything. He didn't have it either, they'd given it to another ranger and she wasn't here yet.

We sat around in the morning for a bit, drinking some orange juice we'd gotten the night before, then went out to go and get some breakfast, which wasn't part of the plan, and make a new plan for the afternoon. The ranger with our stuff ended up showing up about then, and we got our stuff back, and then went to the Big Sur River Inn for breakfast/lunch. Very nice venue. Ok food, fairly high prices.

But their backyard is nice. They have chairs in the creek, and shade, so we went and sat down there with our feet in the water, and stacked more rocks, and chatted, and eventually, decided it was time to go home. (which I slept through again)

Squirrel and thieves camp	McMay Falls, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park	McMay Falls, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park	McMay Falls
North along the Big Sur Coast	Lisa, Junko and Elaine at McMay Falls	Karl and Lisa	All of us in the tunnel to McMay Falls