This summer we decided to head north to Big Sur, a place I’ve heard only great things about. At the beginning stages of planning our trip, I was thinking of making a day or two jaunt to San Francisco so we could show the boys all the classic San Francisco stuff, but then realized we’d be stretching ourselves thin – like we’ve done on our last two camping trips. Those trips were great, but we were constantly on the move: setting up camp, exploring for a day, packing up and driving to the next spot, and doing it again. As much as we got to explore a lot on those trips, they were also a lot of work. So this time we decided to stay put and just explore all the things Big Sur had to offer. In retrospect, this was a GREAT decision. This is one of the first trips we’ve gone on where I felt satisfied in checking all the boxes of things we wanted to do/see.

Reservations

After some research, I decided Pfeiffer State Park was the campground for us (you can check the current fees here). But, it’s also the preferred campground for a lot of people. The sites are booked six months in advance! So this destination definitely requires some planning ahead. I looked at the calendar and set the dates that we wanted to travel, then calendared back six months and set myself a reminder to book the site. I also did lots of research ahead of my booking date: I reviewed the campground map as well as online reviews to find the best sites. I’ve relied heavily on Campsite Photos the last few years to get a visual on individual sites, and a handle on what are considered the best sites (they have stars on the photos for the best sites).

A day before my booking date, I made a list of my top campsites that I would want, and compared them to what was showing as booked for any of my dates through Reserve California. Although no reservation could be made for my initial date at that point, you can make reservations for “add on” dates: if my initial reservation date is January 14th, I can book my site from that point forward, even though I couldn’t book a site starting on January 15th. So someone else could have already reserved some crossover dates on the sites I’m looking at.

The reason it’s good to know what sites won’t work before your booking date is so you don’t waste any time trying to reserve sites that are already booked. You have to log in and be ready at 8:00 a.m. to book your site: they go FAST. So I check the available reservations the day before and the morning of my booking date, before 8am, and whittle down my list, and pick which site I’m going to aim for first.

For Pfeiffer State Park, after walking around the campsite we noticed there are very different kinds of sites. The ones highlighted in green are the ones that are surrounded by coastal redwoods (which is what we wanted). The yellow areas were more open and had oak trees instead of the large pine trees – I would have been really disappointed if we ended up in one of those, to be honest.

I will say, however, that the bottom green area is VERY shady, so our site never got a ton of sunlight and remained pretty cold in the morning, and cooled down quickly in the afternoon.

With that said…

Saturday

We left our home in Orange County, CA, at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday – we had packed up the truck the night before, and I highlighted the few items we still had to pack that morning on my packing checklist, just to make sure we didn’t miss anything. We made it to San Luis Obispo for lunch, and stopped at Mr. Pickle’s. It was a bit pricey but it was good, and included free chocolate chip cookies!

We had to take the road up through Monterey since Highway 1 is still closed due to a landslide, but we arrived at Pfeiffer State Park around 3:30 p.m. The drive IN to the campground is already stunning: no matter how many times we drove through it, it always took my breath away. We picked up a couple bundles of firewood at the entrance gate after we checked in ($12 per bundle, cash only), and made our way to our campsite.

Our campsite was BEAUTIFUL! We explored most of the campground during our visit, and I really think we got the best spot.

We spent the rest of the afternoon/evening setting up our site, exploring our surroundings, and hoping our dinner would defrost in time!

We were so tired that we forgot to clean up our site, and all night we heard animals scavenging through our stuff. I was pretty sure our entire snack box would be gone in the morning. Jeff looked out at one point and saw a skunk going through our trash (yes, we forgot to dump it out), and wisely decided to leave them alone. Thankfully they didn’t get into our food bins and ate all the gross stuff from our trash can, so I really just had wrappers and paper towels to pick up in the morning. The rest of the nights we made sure to dump the trash and leave all our food bins in the truck (no bear boxes, here).

Sunday

Since Saturday was such a long driving day, I planned for us to explore the campgrounds and state park on Sunday. The nights are cold, and our site was pretty tucked away in the shade, so early mornings did not happen for us (so hard to get out of our warm cocoons!). I made pancakes (I prepped the batter at home), the boys explored, and we just enjoyed our surroundings. Once we were ready, we explored the Pine Ridge Trail. This trail was a bit stressful with the kids since it’s very narrow and has a big drop off. We didn’t make it all the way, but enjoyed the parts we did, although our favorite part was the very beginning.

We got back to our campsite for lunch then drove to the Big Sur Lodge at the entrance of the park to look for some essentials. While there, we explored Warden’s Path and the Nature Center. There is a VERY cool river cross walk that we loved – although we did take the bridge on the way back so we wouldn’t have to take off our shoes again (I sacrificed my sweater so everyone could dry their feet after we crossed – small price to pay, to be honest).

The Nature Center is pretty small, but kept the kids entertained for a few minutes and had bathrooms nearby, which we needed.

We took a walk around the campgrounds after dinner, and explored a little bit of the Big Sur River Gorge trail – I do wish we’d come back to this spot again, it was so pretty! Other campers had brought their drinks and camping chairs, put them in the water, and enjoyed the sunset. Like pros!

Monday

This was our day of exploration and driving to Carmel and Monterey. On the way there we stopped at Andrew Molera State Park and Point Lobos Natural Reserve. The great thing about both of these was that our camp site permit gave us admission to these parks as well, so we didn’t have to pay any park fees to get in.

At Andrew Molera we walked through the dirt road and went over a beautiful river crossing, then took the Creamery Meadow Trail to get to the beach. I think it was only a mile walk, but it was interesting to see how much the landscape changed throughout the trail. The boys had so much fun on the beach adding to driftwood teepees that are scattered throughout the beach. Jonny wasn’t as big of a fan: it was pretty cold and windy, but we hung out for a little bit.

By the time we got back to the truck, we realized it was already almost 12:00 p.m. and we were starving. My plan was to have a picnic in Carmel, but the Andrew Molera parking lot was just as good! We all climbed into the back of the truck and ate our sandwiches, chips, and drinks that I had packed that morning. I had a pretty emotional moment at this point just watching our boys eat their lunch, watching the squirrels, and being so thankful for these memories we get to make with them.

Our stop at Point Lobos was pretty quick: we went straight for the Sea Lion point since we wanted to look for sea lions. The parking lot is right next to the trail and it’s a short walk to the viewpoint. There were only a handful of sea lions lounging on the rocks below – I think they were the lazy or injured ones that got left behind, but I was thankful for them anyway!

Point Lobos had a pretty long line to get in when we drove by on Saturday on our way to our campsite. It wasn’t nearly as busy when we went on Monday, but if you go on a weekend, be prepared for crowds. I do think we left a lot unexplored at this park.

Our final agenda item for the day was checking out the 17-mile drive around Pebble Beach. There is a fee to get in to this gated area, $11 and cents. As long as you have your receipt, you can use it to get in and out throughout the day. We entered through the Highway 1 gate, then exited at the Pacific Grove gate to head to Ghirardelli for ice cream and a quick walk around Cannery row, then entered again through Pacific Grove gate to finish the drive. If you are pressed for time or have small kids, I would stick to just the coastal part of the drive – the first few stops were not very exciting. On the coastal side, we got to see sea otters and deer, and some crazy outdated mansions!

Although I’m not sure we’d do the 17-mile drive again, we’d definitely do Ghirardelli again! It’s not cheap, but it was delicious. Jeff and Josh shared a monstrous thing that had two brownies, vanilla ice cream, whip cream, salted caramel and a cherry. Jake, Jonny and I shared the “world famous” sundae, which was SO GOOD.

I had originally planned for us to have dinner around Carmel or Monterey, but the timing didn’t work and looked a bit fancier than we were up for. We decided to find something on our way back to camp, which was an hour back south. We ended up at Fernwood Tavern and OH-MY-GOODNESS. Must dine in the back patio: cool, wooden furniture, green trees all around, view of the river below, and lights strung up across the patio. The food and drinks were also delicious, but definitely a bit pricey. We spent $150 for the 5 of us: a beer, a margarita, three Shirley Temples (we decided to let the kids live a little, but in retrospect, this was too much living: they could have shared one), two pizzas (shareable size), fries, and a salad. HIGHLY recommend.

Tuesday

This was another day that we planned to stay fairly local-we had a few other points of interest to check out. We headed south from our camp ground towards the road closures, looking for Pfeiffer Beach. There is NO signal around there, so I couldn’t map us and really had no idea where it was. We ended up making it all the way to McWay Falls, which was on my list anyway.

The fog just a little south and north of our campground was crazy-I’m so curious why our little pocket of woods didn’t have any fog but was basically surrounded by it. Either way, it gave McWay Falls a cool, mysterious look, although it also blocked us from having a clear view of the falls (you can kiiiiindaaaaaa see them through the fog).

This was another park where we didn’t have to pay the fee. If you’re not camping at a state park and need to pay, it was unattended when we got there so you had to have cash to leave in the pay box. It’s a short walk to the lookout, and unfortunately the waterfall trail was closed, but looked beautiful.

We decided to head a little further south, but ended up turning around and heading back north, still on the hunt for Pfeiffer Beach. We thought it was past our campground but alas, it was not, so we turned around AGAIN and thankfully had a pocket of service where I could map us and find out that the turnoff was exactly a mile south of our campground, so Jeff kept and eye on the speedometer and counted down: “half a mile, .8 miles, .9 miles…” and then we saw the tiniest, almost u-turn street on the right, called Sycamore Canyon. There were NO signs on the highway that indicated the beach was down this tiny street, so I’m not surprised we missed it (several times)! We drove down that street for two miles, and you have to drive pretty careful since it’s a narrow road and cars have to pull over to let each other pass.

Pfeiffer Beach doesn’t take any of the park passes, so be prepared to pay to get to the parking lot, which I think was $12. We were told this beach had purple sand, and although there were some hints of it, it wasn’t as prominent as the boys had expected.

After this, we had a grandiose plan to raft and tube down the river at the campground, and let’s just say: if no one else is rafting all the way down the river, there’s a reason why…the bruises on my feet will definitely remember that next time we will just pick a section of the river to hang out in. By the end of the ordeal, we were ready for ice cream and drinks, so we headed to the Big Sur Lodge right outside the campground. Highly recommend their beer battered fries. Then we did a quick visual of Pfeiffer Falls trail. We didn’t have the energy to actually do it, but the beginning part was beautiful!

Wednesday

We had our campground booked through Thursday, but we also had a site booked at Cachuma Lake in the hopes of breaking up the drive on the way home, and giving the boys a chance to fish. We debated staying at Pfeiffer or heading home, and reluctantly decided to head out Wednesday. We took our time packing up since we only had a 3.5 hour drive, but by the time we got to Cachuma Lake around 5 p.m. we had no desire to set up our tent again in 90 degree weather (and the site couldn’t compare to our Big Sur site), so we decided to keep going and just head home. I think in the future we’ll just plan on driving straight from Big Sur to home. We did pull off at Bixby Bridge to get some pictures.

Eating and Groceries

If you don’t bring groceries from home (which we did), then you have to stock up in Monterey/Carmel, because there is not much in Big Sur proper. There was one night that I wanted to do burgers and I didn’t want to buy ground beef too early and take it from home, so I planned on buying it there. The best we found was some off-brand bacon, so we had BLTs instead. There are lots of little general stores with basic supplies and snacks, and maybe we could have checked some other general stores, but I don’t think they would have been much different. I will say that the property was gorgeous: they had Adirondack chairs in the river and I wish we could have just spent the evening there!

I was really glad I had purchased all of our groceries before we left, and had pre-cooked and frozen two of our meals ahead of time (carnitas tacos and spaghetti and meatballs, always favorites at home and camping!).

Favorite Camping Items

You can click here to read about some of the camping tricks I tried on this trip and the stuff I liked (as well as my kitchen setup, which I feel in love with), but here are a few new items I purchased for this trip:

• The boys finally outgrew their canteens, so we bought them these kids Camelbak’s
• And I got myself this one
• We got dollar headlamps at Walmart for the boys, but I got Jonny this Paw Patrol flashlight, which he loved
• This clear shoe organizer REVOLUTIONIZED my camp kitchen, and I wrote all about it on my camping tricks post linked above

Where did you or will you adventure to this summer? What’s your favorite campsite?!

Prior vacations:

• Zion & Bryce
• Yosemite & Sequoias