Journeys›Photograph

Sunny November on the Carmel Coast

·Monterey County, California·#bay area#family#autumn#hike#coastal-trail
Two smiling people on a rocky beach, with large rock formations and the ocean behind them under a bright sun.

Garrapata State Park, a few miles south of Carmel, and warm enough in mid-November that sweatshirts came off before we were half a mile in. The park runs about 3,000 acres along the Big Sur coast, state land since 1979, and we did both halves of it in one day.

First the shore: a scramble down among the rocks and tide pools, big dark sea stacks with the sun sitting right on top of them, kelp piled in the pools. Then across to the inland side for the Whale Peak loop, which climbs through coastal scrub toward the ridge above Soberanes Point. The kid rode my shoulders for most of the climb, which made the narrow sections interesting. Monterey cypress in dark clumps along the ridgeline, everything else that dry gold-green the coast gets by late fall, and the ocean off to one side the whole way around.

The pink water bottle traveled in someone else's hand and got passed forward on demand, which is roughly how the whole loop went.

Two adults and a child on shoulders walk a dirt path through hilly, dry scrubland under a blue sky.Two people and a child on shoulders walk a path on a sunny, brushy hill next to the ocean.Two adults and a child on shoulders walk a dirt path on a sunny, brush-covered hill overlooking the ocean.Three people, one carrying a child on shoulders, stand on a dirt path overlooking a green, hilly coast and the ocean.

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