California Pacific Coast Highway
These are photos from three days of travel down California Route 1 along the west coast of the USA. I think it is a very worthwhile trip for sightseeing and you can do nearly all of it without visiting any large cities.
I made a two day drive down California Route 1, from San Francisco to San Diego, but the day before I spent visiting the parks around the Golden Gate Bridge and the Fisherman's Wharf /Ghirardelli Square area of San Francisco.
My first stop off of Route 1 was in Monterey. It is a town that is well suited to visitors. There is a large park by the marina, a wharf area, an aquarium, and the downtown "Cannery Row" area is very tourist-friendly.
The next detour I took was for a scenic drive down to Pebble Beach, the same one where they have the golf tournaments. It was through some private property where I paid a (very small) fee to drive. Not many place to stop, but the beach was beautiful.
Continuing south on Route 1 you will soon come to the most dramatic and interesting landscape on the trip. The Big Sur region of the coast is a small mountain range that ends right at the coast and offers lots of gorgeous views. One way to know you are getting to "the good stuff" is when you see the Bixby Creek Bridge.
There are a number of place to pull off the road and take in the sites. Sometimes dirt and sometimes paved lots. One place where there is a lot of parking, lots of trails, and lots of shoreline scenery is the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. You may have already seen photos of the "beach + cliffs" area that is right outside a tunnel that takes you from the park trails under the highway.
For me, starting from just outside of Oakland, and making plenty of stops to see the sites, it was getting to be the middle of the afternoon by the time I got to the JFB State Park. There are not a lot of towns in the area. Maybe better for camping. I drove a few hours more and stayed in Lampoc, CA, overnight.
Just outside of Lampoc, there was a nice distraction called Refugio State Beach. I'm not sure they still have the policy, but the entrance fee was waived if I just wanted a 1 hour pass to look around and take photos.
Heading south on Route 1 you start to encounter more towns and cities. I thought the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens was a good diversion from the growing urban sprawl. Nice trails.
Here are two photos from Malibu and LA County, California. I only stopped at a couple of "pull-offs" in Malibu. When I got to the Los Angeles area, Redondo Beach was a wide-open view with plenty of parking, so I stopped there as well.
There are a few more towns along the way, but my goal was to get to San Diego, so I drove straight from Redondo Beach. San Diego has a tourist-friendly area around the convention center and marina. I think the most scenic part, though, is the shoreline at La Jolla.
So, if I didn't stress it enough already, I think this is a very worthwhile trip if you find yourself on the Left Coast of USA. If you can't do a leisurely trip over several days, then try to visit the Big Sur area.
More viewing options:
- Bitchute Video Slideshow: https://www.bitchute.com/video/dZNO4TLCqfiG/
- Flickr Photo Album: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmRyocJ5
- All photos on my website: https://kimbriggs.com/photo/california-pacific-coastal-highway