@NP.Adventuring - Pinnacles

Pinnacles National Park Website

For spring break we decided on a California road trip to knock Pinnacles National Park off our list. This park has been teasing us since 2013, when it became a park, because we are from southern California and travel fairly close to it all the time but have never had a chance to go. It was too far of a drive to make in 1 day from AZ with the kids, so we did a Pit Stop in Morrow Bay on the way up. The park is split into two halves, East and West, with no road connecting the two. We chose to do the East side because we heard that the Bear Gulch Cave was the one to see.

The park sits along the San Andreas fault and the pinnacles are the remnants of an ancient volcano that was torn in half by the fault movement. The fault movement is also responsible for the caves in the park. They are what is known as Talus caves, which are formed when boulders and spires on a cliff fall into the narrow canyon below and get wedged in between the walls before hitting the bottom.

The park is really small and is not crowd friendly at all, there are only 10 parking spaces at the Bear Gulch parking area, so you'd better plan on getting there early or go during the week like we did. (all the parking was still full) The cave hike itself was really fun and you'll need to bring a flashlight. There was a bunch of stairs and some tight squeezes but the kids loved every second of it. We couldn't go through the last hundred yards out the top exit because there was too much water and we didn't want kids walking around in wet shoes all day, so we took the Moses Spring exit near the top. For such a small park we saw tons of wildlife, especially birds, but even a couple deer and a flock of turkeys.

This park rates at 5 out of 5 stars based on our standard criteria.

Rating Criteria: Fun, Scenic, Ease of Travel, Wildlife, Crowds

We finished out our week with Pit Stops at the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, Point Lobos State Reserve, various Big Sur locations, and the Elephant Seal Rookery.