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Prints can be purchased from the following link: prints.chriszachary.com/cali2012 |
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| Day One – My brother, his fiance, Allie and I recently returned from a awesome journey out west. From the dates of August 1-9 we explored up and down the Southern California coast. We ventured as far north as Monterey and as far south as San Diego. After flying into San Diego Wednesday August 1st, we immediately hopped in the rental car, picked up a surfboard for John, and started the quest North, to our home for the night, Point Mugu State Park. We stopped in San Clemente on the way to visit with our Cousins Tami & Michael. After a great lunch at The Riders Club Cafe and some quality visiting we started back on the road towards Long Beach, CA. | |||||
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| We always seem to underestimate California traffic, especially around the L.A. area. You can always count on traffic to set you back at least an hour. We eventually made it into Long Beach, CA for a quick stop at Tuttle Cameras to pick up my lens rental for the week, a 100-400L lens. I knew I’d need a little more reach since we’d be doing a lot of surfing, so I reserved a rental through BorrowLenses.com. Next stop, Walmart for camping supplies for the next 3 nights. Subtract 2 more hours. Walmart was a zoo and set us even more behind on our precarious itinerary. Finally, after more then 6 hours from departing San Clemente (only a 2 hour drive according to google), we made it to Point Mugu State Park. This state park is placed right on the rocky shoreline of the Pacific, with the Santa Monica Mountains as the backdrop. Delightful. We arrived just before sunset, secured our spot and set up camp. For the three nights we camped, we were fortunate enough to have a full moon, illuminating the landscape. After a delicious dinner, a great fire and a bit of exploring, we climbed into our tents and got some sleep, trying to adjust to the 3 hours we gained on the plane. | ||||
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| Day Two – After waking up, eating a little breakfast and packing up camp, we were back on the PCH headed North. We opted to take the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway or The 1) rather than one of the other major highways because, even though it took longer, it took us through a lot of cool towns and landscapes and practically hugs the coast creating some really great scenics. We passed through Oxnard, Ventura, Santa Barbara, Guadalupe, Pismo Beach, San Luis Obispo, Morro Bay & San Simeon, among others, in route to our next home for the night, Andrew Molera State Park. As we usually do, we took our time, stopping to see the sights and look for potential surf spots. We made a quick stop in Santa Barbara hoping to skate a little skatepark on the beach. Unfortunately, the park was closed because of a skate camp but we made up with that misfortune by grabbing a couple Egg McMuffins from McDonalds. We next stopped off at Pismo Beach, hoping to be able to access the Pismo Sand Dunes. Turns out you can only access them by 4 wheel drive, we figured we’d save that adventure for the next trip. Back on the road up to San Luis Obispo to stop at a few surf shops so John can try and find a board sock for his surfboard. I don’t know if you’ve ever traveled at a high rate of speed with a set of soft racks attached to your roof, but it produces this dreadful humming sound that can melt paint off walls. We thought a board sock might help remedy the situation, but after circling blocks in San luis Obispo in a disoriented fashion, we came up empty handed. Back on the road. Next stop was at a beach in San Simeon called Piedras Blancas, not far from Hearst Castle. This beach is home to hundreds of Elephant Seals. These enormous, vile creatures spend their days napping on the sand. Every once in a while, on would get up, move three feet, then lay back down and take a nap. We weren’t sure if they would be there this time of year, as they don’t start breeding until November, but sure enough, they were. After checking those blubbery bastards out for a bit, we got back on the road North. Not long after, the road transformed from a flat, straight coastal road to a mountainous, steep, winding, fall off and instant death-type of road. Allie laid down to keep from loosing her cookies and I became the passenger seat driver, using my passenger double foot brake whenever death was imminent. We stopped at a few choice vista points, including the famous Bixby Bridge. Before we knew it, we were amongst the redwoods of Julia Pfeiffer State Park. Our destination, Andrew Molera State Park, was just beyond Julia Pfeiffer, so we decided to explore Julia Pfeiffer the next day. Since Andrew Molera State Park doesn’t accept reservations for its 24 campsites, we started to get a worried when we noticed all area campgrounds were full. Our worrying turned genuine when we approached Andrew Molera with a “Campsites FULL” sign by the entrance. | |||||
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| With nowhere else to go, we decided to go into the park anyway and see if the ranger could recommend a place to go. As luck would have it, someone had left early, and there was one site available! Excited about not having to sleep in the car, we parked and started hauling our gear the .25 mile to the site. We set up our tents right next to an overanxious colony of ground squirrels and began exploring the area. We found another trail that leads you directly to a cool little bay, with cliffs overlooking the pacific. The mouth of the bay has potential to be a pretty fun little wave on a decent swell, but it was peeling about knee high so we decided to just explore on foot. We took a ridge line trail up to a bluff that over-looks the bay on one side and the Pacific on the other. It was here where John proposed to Allie! I don’t know if he planned it like this, but it couldn’t have been a better location. I positioned myself a little higher on the bluff while they were sitting on a bench about 200 yards away and discreetly shot some photos of the proposal going down. She of course said yes and they lived happily ever after. We decided to start taking impromptu engagement photos for the rest of the trip which I’ve decided to put in a separate post here on the blog, so look for those. We stayed out on the bluff past sunset then made our way back up the trail to camp, almost getting our eyes gouged out in the process by hungry bats. We cooked dinner under the light of the rising moon, had a nice fire, then crawled in our tents and fell asleep fat and happy to the sound of coyote howls. | |||||
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| Day Three – The next morning we made coffee, packed up and headed down to Julia Pfeiffer State Park. We knew we wanted to come explore this park for 2 reasons; the redwoods and McWay Falls. If you’re not familiar with McWay falls, it is an 80 ft waterfall that flows year-round and empties directly into the ocean. Paired with the blue-green water it’s a sight we didn’t want to miss. Next we headed into the main entrance of the park and did a little hiking. We took a trail that leads up McWay creek to Canyon Trail Falls and McWay Creek Falls a 30 foot waterfall amongst 300 ft redwoods. The trail didn’t seem very well maintained and we had to do a little scrambling, but we made it to the base of the 30 ft waterfall. We did a little more exploring in the park before packing back in the car for the 5 hour drive back down south. Our destination for the evening, Malibu Creek State Park. We made a quick stop in Cambria for lunch and continued on towards Malibu. We had a little bit of trouble finding the state park. First our iPhone directions took us up the opposite side of the mountain then we ended up in a different section of Malibu Creek State Park, but we eventually found it. Of the three areas we camped, this was probably our least favorite. The area was great, but the park just wasn’t very well maintained and the campsites were packed full of people. But we did manage to sneak off and get some good hiking in before dark. I ran off first because I saw some deer and coyotes in the grasslands so I wanted to get some shots before dark. After seeing a couple dozen deer and 3 or 4 coyotes, it was too dark to shoot, so I packed up the gear and we proceeded to hike up a mountain. It was completely dark by the time we got to the top but the views were still incredible. The great thing about these mountains is they have few, if any, trees, so once you get to the top you feel like you’re actually rewarded for your efforts. Generally, Appalachian mountains are heavily forested so once you get to the top, you hardly know it. We got back, set up camp and started dinner. Later when exploring the bathrooms, some kids pointed out a campsite visitor, a tarantula. Yikes. We didn’t have access to any firewood, so no fire tonight. We crashed out early, knowing we had to get up early to make it to Huntington Beach for the US Open of Surfing. | |||||
 
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| Day Four (To be Continued…) – We were surprised to wake up to a little rain and ended up having to pack up camp in the rain, which wasn’t too fun. But our spirits were lifted once we spotted a McDonalds on the way to Huntington… That’s it for Part 1. Cheers. | Keep an eye out for the next post(s) from our 2012 California trip when we stay in Huntington Beach for the US Open…. |