Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park

Left Pacific Grove in the drizzle, having had breakfast at the Happy Girl Kitchen in Monterey. We drove around 17 mile drive and past the very impressive coastline and exclusive golf courses (horribly huge bunkers), then through Carmel and back onto Highway 1.

Today was the day for Big Sur, and thankfully by mid-morning the sun came out enough for us to put the top down on the Mustang - I think it's a felony to drive Big Sur in a convertible with the roof up...!

We stopped at the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park for our picnic lunch - it's the only waterfall that plummets directly into the sea in the whole of California. It was absolutely stunning! There used to be a house on the promontory of land that we were standing on to take the photo - absolutely understood why the early settlers wanted to live there, even though there were no roads when they moved there. It's a shame and also a good thing (in a way) that there is no access to the beaches on this stretch of coastline - the cliffs are just too fragile. It measn that you get a good photo, without the clutter of humanity! But the sea just looks so inviting...

And then we drove on along Big Sur, and despite us thinking that our convertible mustang was something special we counted that 1 in 6 cars coming the other way was also a convertible mustang. Dammit. We were driving the equivalent of a Mondeo! :)

Loved this section of coastline, despite it being fairly busy (sunny Sunday afternoon). We stopped for a break at the very straightforwardly named Elephant Seal Vista - we thought we might see one or two seals, but instead they were lined up along the beach as though it was Bournemouth on a sunny saturday in July! Awesome :)

Found ourselves a lovely beach-view hotel in Pismo Beach, and an even lovelier italian restaurant for dinner.