Friday, January 2, 2009

McWay Falls - Big Sur Coast


Click HERE to view larger in gallery

McWay Falls is about 30 miles south of Monterey at the Julia Pfeiffer State Park. The beach inaccessible (legally) and there is a wooden trail platform you walk on to view the falls. Unfortunately someone had gotten down to the beach earlier as there were footprints in the sand. Would have been nice to have had natural sand here for these shots. In the darker shot they don't seem to show up as much.

I had 3 days in this area. I went to the Monterey aquarium also and have some Jellyfish shots to post once I go thru them.

I have not been in the Big Sur area for over 10 years and did not know of this water fall until just recently.

The falls are supposed to run year round and I thought with the recent rains they would be a little stronger. The fall is fed from McWay Creek and empties out onto the beach on the left side. View the image in the gallery to see it larger.

My big adventure here was with a blue jay that wanted my sandwich. I held out my arm with a large piece of the sandwich. He perched himself on my wrist and sat there for a few minutes eating the entire thing. I had my camera but he would not land on my wrist unless he could see my eyes so I only got one shot of him flying off my hand.


Pfeiffer Beach

Pfeiffer beach is about 11 miles north of McWay falls and is very hard to find as the road is indistinct and relatively unmarked except for some mailboxes. At the time of this shot there were about six other photog's here lined up and some east Indian family was letting their children just play away in front of us. I had to keep asking the father to do something. He would say something to the kids but they would not listen and he did not seem to care much. Finally I had to get emphatic and they got them out of the way.