Personally? I thought this place was a ripoff. It’s not that they weren’t lovely views of the Pacific, but an $8 day use fee for a few short hiking trails? We were wondering why so many people were walking up the steep road to the trails until we spotted the small parking area just outside the entrance gate. So, apparently only the tourists pay. Lovely.

The Guy Fleming trail was a short 2/3 mile loop with Pacific Ocean overlooks and ridiculous amounts of signage telling us to keep out/off things. I don’t know what it is about Californians and their signs, but they were everywhere. A lot of good it seems to do when we could clearly see footprints where folks had jumped over the chains in places to hike near the cliffs when they were asked multiple times not to. Plus, the actual Torrey pines weren’t altogether special or unique and the literature we were handed didn’t offer much insight either.

Perhaps the loveliest scene here is the sandstone cliffs rising up from the beach. We visited about 2 hours before sunset, so the rock was lit up nicely. A little disappointed as we were looking forward to something a little more profound.