During a recent visit to Point Lobos, I was reminded of why this region has been described by Francis McComas as the "greatest meeting of land and sea in the world in the world". As the California National Park Service notes in its introduction to Point Lobos:

The Monterey Bay landscape has changed dramatically since the arrival of the first European explorers, but Point Lobos is one place that has survived relatively intact where you can get a glimpse into the past. Well worth a day’s visit, Point Lobos State Reserve is an easy three mile drive south of Carmel on Highway 1.

Point Lobos is a profusion of wildflowers. Hundreds of acres of tightly packed flowers are common amidst the Monterey Cypress groves of this California State Reserve park. This is a plant community found in a narrow coastal strip from southern Oregon to San Mateo County, and in

 Point Lobos is a geologist's paradise! Rockhounds can see millions of years of rock formation in the layered strata of the sedimentary and metamorphic rocks. The "modern" geological history of Point Lobos began about 100 million years ago when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. Miles below the earth's surface a molten mass of rock deep inside a prehistoric chain of active volcanoes slowly cooled. Resting on top was an ancient deposit of sand and gravel that formed about 60 million years ago and which has since hardened into a sandstone called the Carmelo Formation. Lying on top of the Carmelo Formation, like frosting on a cake, are sedimentary rocks that were deposited on ancient marine terraces. Sediments eroded from the old shoreline and deposited on the marine terraces consist of clay, silt, sand and gravel up to two million years old. Wave action has worn away the Carmelo Formation to form deposits of gravel and white sand beaches.

(See: Story of the Rocks, Jeff Thomson, ("Explore... Point Lobos State Reserve", 1997 Walkabout Publications)

Not to be missed at Point Lobos is the museum in the old whaling station. In addition to artifacts from the age of whaling, this museum also contains unique pictures of the movies filmed in Point Lobos throughout the twentieth century.  An astonishing collection of famous film stars have spent time here. Some 45 movies feature scenes shot at Point Lobos including :

Robert Louis Stevenson visited Point Lobos in 1879 and was so inspired by the landscape that it is said he used it as the basis for the setting of his novel Treasure Island – still well worth a read!