Kirkcreek Campground, CA
We are grateful that our schedules allow us to have so many vacation days together, including Spring Break. With the school district scheduling Spring Break to fall in mid March every year, we have lots of options of where we want to spend it. I wanted to go to Big Sur and see the beautiful central CA coast so I scoped out Kirkcreek campground, one of the few campgrounds in central CA that is right on the ocean. And this campground has one of the best views of any campground we have ever stayed at!
Our amazing campsite complete with the sounds of the crashing waves below.
Although we didn’t get a spot directly on the cliff, we had a beautiful view and we able to fall asleep and wake up to the waves crashing on the shore. Unfortunately, because of heavy rains, the 1 HWY just north of our site was closed for over a year as they repaired the washed out highway. We were hoping that this would open up before our trip, but as more roads were washed out, they actually extended the road closure even more. Despite not seeing a good chunk of the area we were hoping to see, we were still able to see some incredible areas.
We all know that getting to these beautiful places takes time; for this specific trip the drive time was eight hours. We stayed in Tehachapi on the drive out and in Paso Robles on the drive back. The AirBnB we stayed at in Tehachapi was literally in the clouds. It had a beautiful grassy area for the kids to swing in and for Topo run around in. This stop allowed us to break up the eight hours into something more manageable for everyone.
We love that the kids love camping and we were fortunate that we had great weather for the entire trip except for the first day; the clouds rolled in and the day was full of a misty rain. Despite the cool, wet weather, we made the most of it and visited Sand Dollar beach just south of us; everything we did was south of where we stay because of the road closure north of us. We stopped for lunch in the small town of Ragged Point. Fortunately, after we ate the skies started to clear up a little bit and we were able to check out some tidepools where we saw a crab. We also saw whale spouts in the distance! It was incredible!
The next few days were amazing…wonderfully warm temps with the sun’s rays making us hot at times. We went to a couple nearby beaches (Mill Creek and Willow Creek) where we searched for seashells and the kids got clobbered by the waves. We enjoyed the lack of cell service, camp fires (with s’mores of course), and all sleeping together on one side of the trailer.
Because we were getting a bit tired of driving the same winding roads south with no option to go north, we packed up a day early. We stopped for a second time in San Simeon to see the huge elephant seals basking in the sun, and then we had our own beach fun in San Simeon where Ella (and Topo) played in the waves and Miles built creations in the sand. Our last stop along the coast before heading inland to Paso Robles, was the small coastal town of Cambria where we enjoyed the quaint shops and some delicious pizza.
Although we didn’t get to see all of Big Sur, I do think that because of the road closure, there were very few visitors in the area. For each beach we went to, we basically had the entire area to ourselves! It made it easy for Topo to run free and for us to simply enjoy the beauty. I look forward to traveling to the Monterey area in the coming years and getting a chance to see what we missed. The beauty of the Western coast of the U.S. will never get old to us.