Check the road closures to make sure you can get through to where you want to go from wherever you are coming from. They rebuilt one bridges so you can access big sur from the north and through naci—ferguson road, but you still can’t drive up from the south. There are trails/dirt roads off of naci-ferguson and places to camp, but no campfires. It is probably going to be pretty busy in big sur now since they just reopened the road from the north side after being closed for so long. Should be great weather though.
Coastal ridge road is a cool dirt road with lots of great views of the coastline. Its off Nacimiento-Ferguson rd which is accessed of the 101. This road passes through fort Hunter Ligget which is open to the public due to the road closures on Hwy 1.
Naci Ferguson has always been open, at least I’ve never seen it closed. It’s just been the only way to get between the two closures in big sur until lately. You can drive into big sur from the north now on hwy 1. It does cross a little unguarded section of National guard base. They probably have closed it for moving equipment or something occasionally, but it’s a normally open public road. There’s a few little spots to camp on the river near the base around the ponderosa Campground area off of this road. For a Campground, the ponderosa Campground is pretty cool and just over the mtn from the Coast. Fun place to camp and trout fish especially if big sur is packed, but tons of poison oak.
