Trippin' Mallets: Point Lobos

On our last day in Marina, we drove down to Big Sur, all to way up to where the road is closed due to the broken Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge. We went to the ranger station and chatted with the ranger. Evidently the Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, which is closed due to the fire, will take until June-ish time frame to re-open, and the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge will take until the end of September to be fixed. We thus decided to have our lunch picnic in the close-by short trail next to the Big Sur River. The trail was very quiet, and the river full of water after the rain, so after our picnic we also took a nice nap next to the babbling water.

After the nap we decided to drive back up to hike at the Point Lobos Natural Reserve. The ranger mentioned that right now we should still be able to see seal pups on the beach along the trail, so I was eager to go see them. We picked a trail route where we would pass by the seals and the overall loop wouldn't be too long. The trail was beautiful since it was close to the coast most of time. The downside, though, is that the trail was FULL OF POISON OAK!!! Furthermore, the park is trimming all the trails right now in preparation for the upcoming peak season, so many trails were just lined with cut poison oak on the path. Yikes! Hope we properly washed off everything when we got home!

Despite the "unfavorable condition", we finished our loop and got to see many cute seal babies hanging around the beach. We even chanced upon the Whalers Cabin Museum--which we didn't even know existed--and saw some real whale bones and baleen. Pretty cool.

Point Lobos is definitely a cool park to visit, but maybe go during the summer months so the trails are in better shape and the poison oak trimmed back. 😀

The famous Bixby Creek Bridge