Pinnacles National Park is located about 40 miles East of Monterey, California, or 10 miles East of Soledad. However, we stayed on the East side, and there are no roads that directly connect from the East to the West side, other that about a 1.5 to 2 hour drive around. The two main draws for this park are the hiking trails into the "Pinnacles" area in the park, and the California Condors. This park sits right along the San Andreas Fault. The various rock formations are part of an ancient volcano from about 200 miles south of here that was split by the San Andreas Fault, and the rock formations come from the two thirds of the volcano that was carried here as the Pacific Plate moved North.
We took advantage of the hiking, and did see condors, 9 that we can identify! We used www.condorspotter.com to figure out info from the tags.