California’s Highway 1, especially the section from Santa Cruz to Santa Barbara (which includes the well-known Big Sur area), is really the ultimate road trip. Actually, I’d start before Highway 1. If you’re driving southbound, as we do here, I’d recommend starting in San Jose and driving south on Highway 17, which winds through redwoods before joining Highway 1 in Santa Cruz. Good stops along the way include 17-Mile Drive in Monterey, the lovely little city of Carmel, Pfeiffer Beach State Park, Hearst Castle in San Simeon, Morro Rock in Morro Bay, the famous pink Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, and the faux-Danish town of Solvang before you reach Santa Barbara. The State of California provides numerous pullouts for scenic overlooks. Make sure you stop at every one you can because each view seems more beautiful than the last!
The Big Sur section winds along cliffs overlooking the ocean, with lots of curves. One year when I was still a teen-ager, I was driving north along Highway 1 with my mother and my youngest brother in my mom’s big boat of a Cadillac. The power steering went out along those snaky curving stretches. Mom didn’t seem to understand why I was so tense as I tried to steer a heavy car that was never intended to be driven without power steering through all those curves. This is not something I recommend! But let’s return to our perfect day of driving the coast southbound, which was a lovely and incident-free experience.
On this day, we drove California’s Highway 1 from Monterey to San Luis Obispo.
We started in foggy Monterey.
Stopped at Pfeiffer Beach State Park and hiked 3/4-mile (uphill both ways, I swear) to the McNay Waterfall.
Stopped at every scenic overlook to view the breathtaking coastline
And toured Hearst Castle. This is one of his “guesthouses”.
We capped off the evening by dancing in the Madonna Inn’s over-the-top pink ballroom and sampling their famous Pink Champagne Cake!
August 6, 2012