Great Hikes & Parking Tips in Monterey, CA

December 2, 2020

Monterey County is beautiful, and the weather is great, which makes for some awesome hiking—visiting Monterey and planning a hike? Get our hiking recommendations and parking tips for Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, Soberanes Canyon Trail in Garrapata State Park, and Jacks Peak County Park. Don’t have time to read this now?

Point Lobos State Natural Reserve

Point Lobos State Natural Reserve has hiking trails along the Pacific Coast. Free guided walks are typically offered daily, and the schedule can be found on the park website. The Whalers Cabin Museum is typically open daily from 9 am to 5 pm, but unfortunately, due to COVID-19, both the guided walks and museum were closed during our visit.

At the information station, we learned that the park has a cell phone tour that can be accessed by calling 831-998-9458, but with my spotty cell phone coverage, this didn’t work very well for me. Hopefully, it will work better for you.

This park can get very busy, and parking can be tough, so come early and check out our parking tips below.

Parking Tips

FREE parking on shoulder of Highway 1 between Yellow and Orange dots

There is limited paid parking ($10/vehicle) within the park. Parking will fill up on busy days.
There is free parking along the shoulder of Highway 1 when driving South. It begins about 0.3 miles from the Point Lobos entrance. The orange dot in the map image.
On busy days, there can be a lot of cars parked along the highway.
Once you pass Monastery Beach, when you are about 0.50 miles from the Point Lobos State Natural Reserve entrance, start looking for a place to park.
The yellow dot in the map image.

Point Lobos Trail Map. Click to enlarge.

Hiking Trails

There are around fifteen hiking trails at Point Lobos. The complete trail list can be found on the park website, but I couldn’t find any additional information on the website, so I recommend checking out my image of the trail map from the Information Station.

I highlighted in orange the hike we did and would recommend this hike to everyone. All of these trails were fairly easy, the views and cool ocean breeze were amazing, and we saw some wildlife.

Just past the Information Station at the park entrance, we found the South Plateau Trail, which we took towards Gibson Beach. Along our walk, we heard a woodpecker. Then walked around and saw all the birds at Pelican Point. We continued on Bird Island Trail to South Shore Trail. We headed towards Sea Lion Cove and saw multiple sea otters and one sea lion. Somewhere between Sand Hill Trail and Sea Lion Point Trail, the trail was closed, so we headed back the way we came and found our way to Lace Lichen Trail, and back to the entrance.

From the trail map, you can see there are multiple other trails we haven’t hit yet, so you could definitely spend a few days at Point Lobos. If you’re looking for something else to do either before or after your hike, you should check out Monastery Beach.

Point Lobos Pictures

Garrapata State Park

Soberanes Canyon Trail

Trailhead is on the East side of Highway 1, across from the Garrapata Coastal Trail/Garrapata State Park Bluff Trail

You can hike 1.25 miles in, but then you have to turn around and come back the way you came, as the Rocky Ridge portion of the trail has been closed since 2018 due to hazardous conditions from fire damage.

Jack’s Peak County Park

After doing some research online we decided on the 4-mile Lower Ridge, Rhus, and Coffeeberry Loop, but once we got there, we couldn’t find that loop, so we made it up as we went.

Laguna Seca Recreation Area

With the $5 day pass at Laguna Seca Recreation Center, you can watch cars race, and then hike trails 47 and 48 at Fort Ord National Monument.

Looking for other things to do in California? Take a look at our California articles.