Big Sur Photojournal
Traveling around California for the first time.
Coastline of Big Sur overlooking bixby bridge
The start
Last December, I had the opportunity to go back to San Francisco - my third trip in 2025 - for more quarterly planning meetings at work. Given this opportunity, my friend Youngwoo and I took the chance to go on a day trip to Big Sur.
The past two times I’ve been in the Bay Area, I was here for work meetings, with tight schedules and no time for any of my own activities.
For this trip, I finally decided it was time to break that pattern, after all, I haven’t really seen anything beyond Napa Valley, Millbrae, and SFO.
Big Sur from Cypress Point
We left early in the morning, close to 5 AM, so that we could avoid morning traffic through Santa Cruz. The drive was already incredible, with the roads going between mountains and the sun peaking through the peaks around 7 AM.
We stopped by Santa Cruz for a coffee and drove straight to Monterey, our first destination of the trip. We planned to drive along the coastline, but it turns out 17 mile road is a private park. We came as tourists, so we paid to enter anyway, but it was pretty annoying; there was no indication of it on our maps.
Cairns on Moss Beach
Trees along 17 mile road
Honestly, there was not much to look at here other than rich people’s homes, golf courses, and fenced off views, but the drive was nice, and we got a nice preview into what we were going to see later.
The nice (and free) parts
Mountains along highway 1
Posing for the camera lol
Part of me acknowledges that the mountains I’ve seen in Scotland were incredible. The mountains in California are obviously also grand in scale, but given how much I’ve seen in Korea and Scotland, it didn’t impress me that much. It felt more like seeing wild nature after a long period of living in cities. Regardless, I enjoyed driving through them, the North American way to appreciate nature.
Garapata Beach
Youngwoo
More Cairns
Solid beach, would come back again.
The bridge everyone knows about
I was so excited to see the Bixby Creek Bridge. As someone who has never toured around California, all I knew about this place was everything I saw on GTA 5 and my MacBook home screen, both of which have the Bixby Bridge. In fact, I never even knew the name to begin with, nor did I bother looking it up thoroughly. I just saw the bridge and immediately realized the bridge I was looking at was the bridge I’d seen virtually all along.
Bixby Creek Bridge
Below Bixby Bridge
Coastline looking South of Bixby Bridge
Coastline of Big Sur overlooking bixby bridge
We were lucky enough to grab our parking spot almost immediately after we arrived, but it was a struggle for other cars.
It was kind of scary that they had almost no guardrails for tourists or anything. Like if I were taking a picture and accidentally tripped over a rock, I could tumble down this big ass cliff. I guess it was never really meant to be a tourist destination anyway, but who could ignore this view?
Vroom Vroom
We even saw a couple of supercars along the way. There was a Ferrari 488 Spyder, a Porsche GT3RS, and a Porsche 918 Spyder. I was surprised someone would take a million+ car on these roads; who knows what kind of pebbles and rocks would scratch and dent your car? They are rich, though, and a car is meant to be used, I suppose.
Porsche 918 Spyder
And then there's our car
You can almost see a guy in the top right corner of the Porsche, wondering why there’s this dude with a camera following him.
Point Sur Naval Facility
Pfeiffer Beach
Everyone I knew and their mothers told me to go to Pfeiffer Beach, so obviously I had to visit. The security here is pretty funny, to be honest. One lady with a golf cart keeps this place locked down, driving around between the beach and the front gate, and honestly, she did it pretty well.
The drive in was also very ominous, almost 15 minutes of a downward-sloping one-way road. Almost reminded me of Scotland and rural Korea.
The mysterious entrance of Pfeiffer Beach
Past the front entrance of Pfeiffer Beach
The famous rock
Youngwoo on the rocks
Cleaning my feet
Apparently, Pfeiffer Beach used to be free, but when we got there, there was a fee. Either way, the thought of money disappeared pretty quickly once we got there. Pfeiffer Beach really was that pretty.
I’m never a barefoot-on-the-beach person, but I couldn’t resist this time. The sand was nice, the sunset was nice, and the views were nice. It was a perfect end to the road trip.