Since we ended up spending the whole Christmas break in California, we decided to sneak away for a few days to Big Sur. It was honestly even better than I thought it would be, I had been planning for subzero temperatures, but it was actually gorgeous out during the day, though it was a little chilly sleeping in a tent at night.
We spent our whole second day there exploring the different hiking trails, including Ewoldsen Trail and McWay Falls, which isn’t really a hike at all, more of a quick saunter down a paved sidewalk, but the view at the end is stunning.
Ewoldsen Trail took us about 3 hours total, but at the top there is the option to take a detour onto Waters Trail, which is about 200 yards straight uphill, but leads to the most gorgeous views of the entire coastline. We were pretty tired and sweaty by the time we got to the top, not to mention dehydrated since I hate carrying water with me when I hike, so we stayed at the top for almost an hour, just enjoying the view and recuperating.
The colour of the water is absolutely stunning, so we laid in the grass, soaked up the sunshine and listened to a little boy in the only other group at the top counting the whales surfacing along the shore. He got to somewhere in the 50’s before his parents dragged him back down the hill, although I’m pretty sure he counted the same whale more than once.
I would definitely recommend all of these trails, although they do get busy later on in the day. We got there at 8:30, and were one of the only cars in the parking lot, and we only saw a few other people on the trail, but by the time we got back to our car we were passing huge groups of people on their way to the trailhead, and people were parking for miles along the highway on either side.
loveliness. 