California Coastal Road Trip

Having two weddings on the coast to attend last September – a week and 400 miles apart – Sam and I decided to turn it into a short road trip. 

The first wedding was in the hills above Santa Cruz, about 12 miles outside of the laid back college town, in an area called Bonny Doon. The day after the wedding, we headed down one of the most beautiful highways in the world, Highway 1, also known as Pacific Coast Highway. Our first stop was the 17 Mile Drive around Pebble Beach. The views from some of those incredibly expensive homes and gorgeous golf courses, are jaw-dropping!

One of the most popular photo-ops on the 17 Mile Drive is the "Lone Cypress," a western icon, which is believed to be as much as 250 years old. Scarred by fire, it has been held in place with cables for the last 65 years.

We continued our serpentine route along PCH, past Big Sur and the rugged California coastline, which sometimes reminds me of the Amalfi Coast in Italy.

Along the way, we saw several large pods of grey whales romping and feeding in the distance. They were pretty far out, so we couldn't get any really good shots. One whale watching boat got right up next a very active group of whales, and although I was envious of the people on board, it looked just a wee bit scary, too! Those gentle giants are so HUGE!

Our second night was spent high on a cliff overlooking the ocean, in a quaint little place called the Lucia Lodge, which was built in the 1930s, and is still run by the fifth generation of the Harlan family. The photo below is taken from the top of the hill up behind the cabins.

The office, gift shop/grocery store, and restaurant for the lodge are right on the highway, a few hundred feet from the cabins, and you would never guess from its exterior just how good that restaurant is! We had a truly amazing dinner that evening! 

The Lucia Lodge is near a couple of coves known for jade hunting. After breakfast, we drove south a few miles and found Willow Creek Cove. We walked around the beach, looking for rocks that looked like they might be jade. Although none of the rocks I picked up were obviously jade, I did bring a few home. Anyone out there an expert on jade?

As we continued down the coast, stopping occasionally to take photos or videos, we came across the Piedras Blancas elephant seal rookery. About seven miles north of San Simeon on the central coast, and it is home to about 17,000 elephant seals for birthing, breeding, molting and rest from their long migrations. An organization called Friends of the Elephant Seal are dedicated to protecting the seals and educating the public about them. They even have a webcam where you can watch what's going on: EsealCam

Eventually, we made our way to the city where Sam finished his education at Brooks Institute, and where we spent our first couple years of married life together: Santa Barbara. Such a beautiful city, and one that holds a very special place in our hearts. 

Acting as tourists, we visited Santa Barbara's gorgeous, Spanish-style courthouse. We learned it was dedicated in 1929, with a ceremony where a bronze medallion, from the "Native Sons of the Golden West", was set in the floor with a mixture of water from each of the California missions, sand and gravel from each California county, and cement from local resources. The building has an observation tower, where visitors can get a bird's eye view of the whole city, the mountains behind it and the ocean below. What was most amazing to me, was that we had never visited the courthouse while we were residents there. Of course, we also didn't go to the beach as often as you might think you would, living almost within walking distance of it!

Bronze medallion at the bottom of the spiral staircase.

We spent a couple of nights in Santa Barbara, and took a trip down memory lane, checking out the building where our first apartment was...

... and the cute little cottage on a court on Garden Street, where we lived the second year we were married.

We even found the boarding house that Sam lived in for two years while he was a student. It was being renovated, and looked much better than it did back in 1969-71!

Finally, our last overnight stop, before reaching the site of the second wedding, was Venice Beach. Surprisingly, even having grown up in southern California and spending so much of our youth at various SoCal beaches, neither or us had ever been to this unique destination. Back then, it wasn't considered a desirable place to visit. I remember hearing that it was just a very old, run-down beach town near LA, known for drug activity and violence. Today, Venice Beach is full of surfers, skaters, body builders, artists, performers of all kinds, old hippies and assorted weirdos.

There are surf and curio shops, lots of restaurants, and there seemed to be a medical marijuana dispensary or doctor selling "recommendation cards" on every other corner! Probably the most interesting thing about Venice though is the reason for its name: the canals. Although most of the original canals have been filled in and paved over as streets, a few of them still exist, with multimillion dollar homes adjacent to them.

Here is an interesting article I found online, about the history of the development called "Venice of America", with pictures and photographs from the time, along with the original plans for the creation of the attraction over 100 years ago.

If you would like to see more of the photos I took on this trip, click on my Flickr album.