Highway 1 running south from Pacific Grove to Gorda is one of the most lovely sections of road anywhere on the planet.  Big Sur country.  Big history.  Padre Junipero Serra and members of his mission landed at Monterey in 1770.  Missionaries exploring the headlands and beaches south of Monterey subsequently named the region El Pais Grande del Sur, which in our casual age we have shortened to to El Sur Grande, or Big Sur.

The image above, of California poppies, was recorded on March 30, 2009, at about 16:00 PST, using the Nikon D700 and the AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED at 112mm.  Exposure was f/16 at 1/250s, ISO 200.  You’ll find these poppies along the roadside just about everywhere at this time of year.

The Big Sur coast area was decimated this past year.  First by fire last summer, and then by heavy rains this winter.  Much of two of the major State of California parks in the area – Pfeiffer Big Sur and Julia Pfeiffer Burns – have been closed indefinitely due to damage and/or repair of damage resulting from the fire/erosion.  The image above shows the fence guards that have been placed at the mouths of many of the ravines along the Big Sur coast.  From both relatively narrow; 20ft wide exits, to the large, 75ft wide exit shown above, fences constructed from interlocking wire hoops have been installed – presumably – to prevent debris from crashing onto the roadway in the event of a flood.  The image was recorded on March 30, 2009, at 16:20 PST, using the D700 and the AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED at 45mm.  Exposure was f/16 at 1/250s, ISO 200.

Not all is lost of course.  The headlands are beautiful as ever, viewed from the road and from the many turnouts along the highway.  The image above demonstrates this quite nicely I hope.  The shot was recorded on March 30, 2009, at about 17:00 PST, using the D700 and the AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED at 24mm.  Exposure was f/16 at 1/125s, ISO 200.

The image above, of perhaps the world’s most beautiful cow pasture – I’m not joking – there are dozens of cows roaming around just out-of-frame – was recorded on March 30, 2009 at about 17:25 PST.  The image was captured using the Nikon D700 and the AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED at 40mm.  Exposure was f/16 at 1/100s, ISO 200.  By now you’ve guessed that I’ve figured out that this lens rocks the casbah at f/16 – yeah, it really does.

I understand that those of you who have some keeness for sport driving may be drawn here for the challenge.  The roadbed does seem well-banked in the kooky manner of wistful engineers, and depending on the calendar, I would guess that traffic could be light.  This would not the spot for amateurs however, since reaction errors in the subsecond range can launch you into the deep blue sea – or so I am told.  Oh, and the area does get a daily drive through by the CHP, again, as I am told, since I have no personal experience in such dangerous activities.  Please don’t harass gramps and granny; who you will surely meet here, sooner or later – they’re lovely folks.  More importantly, they’ve earned the right the drive at any damned speed they fancy – even if it does does mess up your righteous manual shift test of the Pontiac G6 tranny!  Finally, and again this would only be -if- you did have some enthusiasm for driving the Big Sur road at thrilling, no, I meant dangerous, dangerous speeds – then I would suggest that your pre-drive preparation might profitably include a little prayer to Padre Serra – Dude, he’s almost a Saint.

Tags: Big Sur, cows, Highway 1, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, Junipero Serra, Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, poppies

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 7:29 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.