The Coast of California

Since Robin and I had found ourselves in Northern California for the Thanksgiving holiday, we decided to take a few days and drive back south on the coast, a drive we had always wanted to do, but had never found the time to do. Read more and see many more photos at the link below.

After eating way too much food on Thanksgiving, we left my family’s house near Redding on Friday afternoon.

An old bridge on the 36.

Instead of taking some boring highway over to the coast, we just drove east on the road my parents live on. After driving for hours through beautiful old ranch land, we found the 36, which winds its way over to the 101. The 36 is a wonderful road with no large trucks (they take the 299) that eventually curves through groves of redwoods.

We headed south on the 101 until close to sunset, and found a small motel in the tiny town of Redway to spend the night. We tried to get an early start, but instead we had a nice slow breakfast in Garberville, just down the road. Before we got to the turn off for Highway One, we also stopped to look at some redwoods and also had to drive the Subaru through the Drive-Through Tree. It’s sad that once upon a time it was OK to chop a giant hole in an ancient redwood to create a roadside attraction, but we couldn’t pass it up.

Roadside Redwoods

The Subaru in a tree!

Winding towards the coast on the 1, we did not come across another single car traveling the same direction as us. The drive is slow, but amazing. Once on the coast, the landscape is wild and empty of people. The California Highway One absolutely lives up to its reputation as one of the best drives in the world. While it’s not exactly a fast road, it is an easy drive as long as you don’t feel like you are in a hurry. Sections of the road are hundreds of feet above the ocean and many sections do not have guardrails to prevent cars from taking a plunge down to the Pacific. Don’t be afraid through, the curves are well marked and the road itself is plenty wide enough to feel comfortable. There are also many turnouts to give you somewhere to pull over to enjoy the view. We really enjoyed ourselves and took it slow, as our only plan was to get to Sausalito sometime that night. In some places, we were stopping every few miles as the view was just too good to pass up. We hit a little bit of fog on this part of the road, but it wasn’t really a problem. We got to Stinson Beach just before sunset and then wound our way back to the 101 and to my aunt and uncle’s place in Sausalito. After a great dinner and some wine, we fell asleep right away, again with plans to get an early start that didn’t pan out.

Driving Above the Fog

Driving above the fog

The Marin Headlands

We got another slow start on Sunday, but we weren’t exactly in a hurry anyway. We picked up some coffee and a few pastries in Sausalito and headed out into the Marin Headlands to eat our breakfast. We wandered around for a bit and watched the huge waves coming in, which had honest 15-20 foot faces out at Point Reyes. We headed across the Golden Gate and through San Francisco and were soon back on the coast. We stopped for awhile at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse, which neither one of us had ever heard of before. We had another beautiful drive on this central coast section of the 1, cruising through Big Sur and stopping in San Simeon to take a look at the Elephant Seals. We still were stopping the car a lot, just to get out and look at the view. After a long day of driving, we reached Morro Bay right at sunset. After watching an amazing sunset over the bay, we grabbed some fish and chips and got back on the road. We weren’t really interested in driving the rest of the 1, since we had seen the Southern California sections of the road before and weren’t going to see anything interesting at night anyway. We drove the rest of the way home on the quick and boring freeways, getting back home in San Diego sometime around 11 p.m. All and all, we had spent three days diving to get home, a drive that usually takes around 11 or so hours on the freeways.We could have spent two weeks doing the same drive, as there are so many interesting places that we had to just zip by because we only had a few days.

If you have the chance and/or desire to drive the California Highway One, go for it – it’s one of the absolute best drives I’ve ever done.