Everyone warned me about the fog. "Go in September," they said. "April is a gamble." I went in April anyway, because that's when I had three days off and a friend's Subaru.
The fog was there the whole time. It sat on the ocean like a lid, lifted for about ten minutes at Bixby Bridge — enough for one photo, the same one everyone takes, and I don't care — and came back. At McWay Falls it was so thick we heard the waterfall before we saw it.
What nobody tells you is that fog makes Big Sur feel even bigger. The road disappears into white. You come around a bend and there's a cliff, and then there isn't. We stopped at every pullout. We ate at Nepenthe on the terrace in our jackets and a blue jay stole a fry right off my plate.
I'll go back in September. But I'd do the fog again too.