Driving the Big Sur..Best places for seals and whales?

[silverfoxcc]

Drivinf south from SFO to Cambria in early July. are there any nailed on locations to see Elephant seals and possibly Whales passing?

[filthypig]

Elephant Seal Vista Point near San Simeon on the PCH. We were there in October last year and there were loads to see.

Elephant Seal Vista Point, 93452 San Simeon for google searching. Excuse my ugly mug

[YankeePorker]

Saw plenty of seals on beaches during that drive up the coast, but for the whales we went out on a whale watching boat out of Santa Barbara. The captain did say that we struck lucky but we saw loads of them!

I have to admit that I probably wouldn't have gone out on the boat if we were just a party of adults, but we had 5 kids with us. Sadly my logic was to show the kids whales before the poor beasts are extinct.

I hope that you're lucky enough to do the drive in something fun - I was driving a 14 seater econoline van.

[Nickyboy]

Unlikely to see any whales from the coast but seals as per the above, it's a protected refuge and well known

[TheTrash]

Highway one is closed for quite a while whilst they repair the damage the mudslides did a few months ago, so no Big Sur drive.

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/roadinfo/display.php?page...

I have seen whales from the shore at Pacific Grove which is right beside Monterey, went on a whale watching trip there and got to see a few whales and a mega pod of (not so) common Dolphins. It's really worth the effort to do one of these trips.

[silverfoxcc]

shi....

I am planning to go beginning of July. Hopefully cleared by then.........hopefully

[TheTrash]

A crappy IPhone picture but you can just see the Whale.

I think the road will be shut until next year as one of the bridges has collapsed. You could go as far as Monterey and then drive around and down to san luis obispo

[p1stonhead]

We saw a few whales along the Big Sur a couple of years back but from a fair old distance obviously.

We did a whale tour at Monterey which was excellent - got right up close to some!

[Frrair]

Please pop in the Rocky Point Cafe for lunch just about 5 miles out of Monterey, the iconic bridge of the Big Sur is in the panarama from the terrace.



We saw the seals just by chance about an hour further south but can't remember exactly where, we could smell them before we came across the busy parking area so we pulled in to see what all the fuss was about and they're they were.

We had a great hols, hope you do too.
Ed

[HotJambalaya]

Just make sure the road is open. Last I heard its totally screwed there at the moment. The post ranch inn is only accessible via helicopter at present.

[silverfoxcc]

As far as i have ascertained, the bridge south of Bixby Bridge is FUBAR. Between Lucia and Cambria there are two or three mudslips which, according to one site i saw,but cannot find again!, will be cleared by 16 June. I am there on the 7th July!!!!!!!
So my plan is

Monterey –over Bixby Bridge- as far as closure
Retrace route to Carmel and onto G18? To Greenfield
101 to San Lucas
G14? to Lucia
CA-1 to Cambria
Thence overland to Fresno for overnight stop

Having probs working out mileage/time on that, as the routefinders totally ignore the G14 and 18 I assume G type roads are the equivalent of our B ones?

Have put out a request on a bigsur blog for some up to date info.

[mgreenwood]

We were there 2 weeks ago and did this drive. Road will not be open before you go they have only just finished removing the old bridge that was damaged and it will take until at least the autumn to put the new one in.

We ended up tracking back in land from Monterrey down the 101 then back off to reach our next stop in San Simeon to visit Hearst castle. Pain in the ar*e as we really wanted to see the Big Sur.

Plenty of seals on the beaches near San Siemon although its mainly females and calves now as the males have gone back to sea

[tleefox]

If you want an alternative, drive the other way and go to Yosemite.

[mgreenwood]

tleefox said:

If you want an alternative, drive the other way and go to Yosemite.

Yeah we did that too - 2 weeks flew in and out of LAX from LHR with Air New Zealand (very good) then did Yosemite - San Fran - Monterrey - San Simeon - Solvang - Venice beach - Long Beach (Queen Mary) and San Diego.