Northern California Coast and Big Sur: Time Trippin'

Anson's birthday usually lands on Thanksgiving weekend, so we decided to tack on a small vacation to the end of our week in Napa and Sonoma. We dropped my parents off at SFO on Saturday morning and started heading south on Pacific Coast Highway. Anson grew up in the Bay area and spent time exploring this stretch of PCH with his mom and brother as a child. It would be a bit of a trip down memory lane for him and I was excited to see it all for the first time.

Wouldn't you know that not long after we stopped in Pacifica to eat our leftover Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches that we'd come to Half Moon Bay, where we had to stop and have a beer at Half Moon Bay Brewery? How convenient since we were tired of drinking wine. We wanted to get out and walk out to Mavericks, the famous big wave surf break nearby, but we settled for a pint of Mavericks Amber Ale instead.
Anson said that when they used to go to this sleepy fishing town when he was a kid there was no brewery, no wine bars, and no Ritz Carlton, just an annual pumpkin festival, and beginner surfing at the jetty. He wondered at the enormous wave breaking on the horizon at Pillar Point and whether it was a real wave or a fog bank.

Our next stop was Bean Hollow, a seminal place for Anson and his brother, who picked up their surfing bug there as kids. This was the first of so many amazing California coast vistas we saw over the next two days.

As we got closer to Santa Cruz we saw an icon for a winery on the GPS, and discovered that we were passing by Bonny Doon Vineyards. We wheeled the car around and drove up into the wooded hillside, around and around and around. We could not find it! We did find a winery in it's place called Beauregard. I swear, this place must survive solely on the reputation of the relocated Bonny Doon (now in Santa Cruz proper), it's that far off the beaten path. But that's okay because they are making nice wines. We picked up some bottles of their Lost Weekend, a really reasonable Super Tuscan, a style we both love (see past posts on Benessere Vineyards). For $18 a bottle, I'm pretty sure there's another case in our future.

They have a picnic area right outside, surrounded by redwoods, and overlooking the vineyards 50 yards away. What an amazing environment--ocean, redwoods, vineyards all within the same eco system.

After a nice birthday dinner at the friendly La Posta and a drink at the equally friendly Seabright Brewery, we stayed the night in Santa Cruz and got up early the next morning to continue our journey south through Big Sur.

So, I've read the Sunset magazine articles and I've seen the car commercials, but I was not really prepared for the beauty of Big Sur. I've spared you, and just included a fraction of the photos I took during the long, scenic overlook-filled drive. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. Here's a great map of this jaw-dropping stretch of the coast if you are interested.

The north end of Big Sur, just outside of Carmel.

Historic Rocky Creek Bridge, built in 1932, one of many bridges spanning the canyons that puncture the coast.

(Just a note, make sure you have a full tank of gas, because you will not find a gas station until you are almost at the south end of Big Sur and it costs $5.49 per gallon. You will be happy to pay that much though, after white knuckling the last 10 miles, hoping you don't run out.)

We finally got to San Simeon and pulled over to gawk at the elephant seals with all the other day-trippers.

We turned of at Cambria and took Highway 46 east towards Paso Robles. I settled back and put my camera away, expecting an expanse of boring farmland in front of me, only to take my camera back out within a mile. Look at this! Yes, that's the ocean in the distance and cows in the foreground. This is a real photograph.

This rolling, coastal country gave way to more electric fall vineyards like we saw up north. Despite our longing, we didn't stop. We turned down the 101 and headed back to reality. We will save Paso Robles for another trip. It's next on our list.