United States
Big Sur
An 80-foot waterfall spills onto a beach no path reaches, watched only from above.
Fog moves through the canyons like slow breath, dissolving the line between the Pacific and the sky. The cliffs drop raw to the surf, and the sound of it climbs a hundred metres to reach you up through your feet.
Big Sur is not a town but roughly ninety miles of coast where the Santa Lucia Mountains fall into the Pacific without the courtesy of a coastal plain. Its signature image is McWay Falls, an 80-foot waterfall spilling onto a cove beach that is completely off limits, no path down, admired only from above. The Bixby Creek Bridge, completed in 1932, arcs over its canyon as one of the most photographed bridges anywhere, and the Henry Miller Memorial Library, the writer's world for eighteen years, still stages readings and concerts in a redwood grove. Mobile signal vanishes for long stretches, which regulars count as a feature. One honest caveat comes with the territory: Highway 1 through Big Sur closes episodically after slides and fires, so the state of the road is always worth checking before you commit to the drive.
Couple
Cliff, ocean, fog and silence strip the trip to essentials; a terrace dinner with the coastline dissolving into haze below does the rest.
Solo
No signal, no schedule and ninety miles of pullouts make this one of the few West Coast places where solitude needs no defending.
- McWay Falls drops 80 feet onto a beach that is completely off limits, seen only from the bluff above, which keeps its sand permanently empty.
- The Santa Lucia Mountains meet the Pacific with no coastal plain, so Highway 1 rides the raw edge of the continent for roughly ninety miles.
- The Henry Miller Memorial Library, the writer's home ground for eighteen years, hosts readings and concerts in a redwood grove.
- The Bixby Creek Bridge, completed in 1932, remains one of the most photographed bridges in the world.
An Ambrosia Burger and a glass of wine on Nepenthe's terrace, feeding travellers above the fog line since 1949.
Morning pastries from the wood-fired bakery on Highway 1, fuel for the day's slow drive south.
Fårö
Sweden
Wind-carved limestone sea stacks stand sentinel on Bergman's island of silence and stone.
Gökçeada
Turkey
Turkey's largest island: organic vineyards, empty beaches and Greek stone villages coming slowly back to life.
Eigg
Scotland
A community-owned island where a volcanic ridge towers over sands that sing underfoot.
Hoh Rainforest
United States
Twelve feet of rain a year drape the maples in moss that swallows sound whole.
Sedona
United States
Red rock cathedrals rising from the desert where pilgrims come to feel the ground hum.
Capitol Reef
United States
Pioneer orchards still bearing fruit inside a hundred-mile wrinkle in the Earth's crust.
Saguaro
United States
Cathedral stands of giant cacti with arms raised, some nearly two centuries old.