Big Sur is all about beaches.  This area of coastline is so beautiful and remote that most of it is state parks — one after another, running down the Pacific Coast Highway.

It’s not the kind of beaches that you might picture, though.  You will not find bikini-clad sunbathers, or beach umbrellas, or the scent of sunscreen in the air.  Instead, there are towering rock formations, seal skeletons, wheeling bird of prey, crashing waves, a chilly wind, and long stretches land that are totally deserted apart from the occasional lunatic surfer.

We spent a fair amount of time on the beaches during our few days in Big Sur.  We’ve already written about the seal-covered beaches of Ano Nuevo, but there was another beach in the park that could be visited as well.  I think it must be overshadowed by the seals, because we were the only ones there, despite its beauty.  Shadowed on three sides by towering cliffs, all sign of the world outside the beach was hidden.  We also found the most interested and beautiful rocks that we’d ever seen.  Sadly for us, the park forbids removing anything, or we would have emerged with full pockets. As it was, we still spent substantial time hunting down rocks for the sheer pleasure of showing them to each other, and it was hard to drag the kids away.

(Zoe found an especially cool rock that was covered with fossil imprints.  We brought it to show a ranger with some vague vision that it would produce great excitement and lead to us being given a plaque in the visitor center, but the ranger was rather blasé about it, so I guess it was not that unusual.  But if we’d found this at home it would have been a certified treasure.)

On our first evening in Big Sur, we visited the famous Pfeiffer Beach for the sunset.  We discovered this was a very popular activity, as there were legions of photographers with fancy cameras lined up, apparently awaiting the moment when the setting sun would shine through a window in a large rock formation just offshore.

This was an absolutely beautiful place, the kind of place where you just sit down and fall into a trance staring at the amazing surroundings and listening to the crashing of the sea.  Unless, of course, you are one of our non-meditative-minded children.  They instead spent their time wading into the water (which was freezing, but no more so than New Hampshire in mid-summer) and building elaborate sand structures to be washed away by the tides.  We again had to drag them away, wet and sandy, as dusk began to fall.

The next day (in a steady drizzle), we visited the famous beach at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park (not to be confused with Pfeiffer Beach mentioned above — apparently these Pfeiffers were major bigwigs around here).  This one we only got to view from far above, but it was still spectacular — a waterfall emerging from the cliffs and falling into the bright Carribean-turquoise waters below.  The girls wanted to get their feet sandy, though, so we asked at the booth if there was anywhere nearby that provided access to the water.  They directed us to a very different beach (which a subsequent Google search identified as Partington Point).  We walked down a lonely trail that eventually led us into a tunnel through a cliff.  Emerging on the other side, with the crashing surf on one side of us and steep cliffs rising on all other sides, it was like we were alone in the universe.  This was not exactly what you would call a “beach”, as the ground was covered with various sized rocks rather than sand (perhaps a beach in progress?)  Past visitors had built cairns from the beautiful and diverse rock collection, and the girls enthusiastically seized onto this activity.  By the time we left, I think there were at least twice as many cairns as when we’d arrived.

On our way out of Big Sur, we made one more beach stop, at Andrew Molera State Park.  We walked about a mile down a beautiful path that wound through various types of vegetation, and emerged at yet another lovely deserted beach.  At this point we began to feel as though this trip was arranged especially for us by some Matrix-like overlord, because there was yet another diverting challenge for the girls: driftwood!  The beach was covered with driftwood in all shapes and sizes, and some one had even constructed a shelter out of it.  Zoe immediately began directing a new construction project.  So with any luck, few reminders of us remain in California to this day.