Last night I didn’t sleep as well as I might have wished but during the waking periods I was ably serenaded by the vehicles passing by on US-101 which is about 50 feet away from the trailer. At dawn the skies were clear and the sunrise was nice. Peggy awoke a bit later and we sat down for our usual coffee tonsil wash and then decided to go out for breakfast.
Fortunately, there is a truck stop right across 101 from our current digs that includes a greasy spoon called Jose’s. Peggy chose Cream of Wheat for breakfast and alleged it was both creamy and wheaty. It came with some lumps but Peg said it was okay. She only needed to add butter and salt and, voila, nothing. I chose country fried steak as part of my never-ending quest to find the best chicken fried steak in the country. It isn’t at Jose’s although my food was still pretty good; ample portions, tasty hash browns but somehow they cooked half of my eggs over hard and the other half over easy. I am not sure how they accomplished this. Prices were good and we left owing less than $20.
From Jose’s we drove south on US-101 to CA-46 which goes west to Cambria, Highway 1 and Hearst Castle. CA-46 west is a very scenic road as it winds through a coastal range pass which offers a spectacular panorama of the California coastline. We continued on 46 to Highway 1 and turned north toward Big Sur and Carmel. This section of Highway 1 is very narrow and quite twisty as it hugs the edges of mountains to the east and abrupt drop-offs to the Pacific Ocean to the west. I understand the tough, rocky sections of the roadbed were cut by prisoners using hand tools. Any attempts at escape going west would consist of several steps to make it to the edge of the road followed by a breezy, rapid acceleration as the convict passed through air before being squished on the rocks way below the road.
Just north of Hearst Castle, we pulled into a gravel turnout on the west side of the road and looked out the 100 yards or so to a sand beach covered with elephant seals that were using their large flippers to throw sand onto themselves. Maybe they get sunburned easily. This is the first time I have seen elephant seals in the wild and they are impressive monsters. A couple of bulls were bashing their heads together in a friendly, 4-ton dispute on the shore. The elephant seals we saw here were larger than most of the cars we passed on the road. There were also a few sea lions hauled out on sandy sections but segregation seemed pretty stark.
As we continued north we spotted several kestrels, more elephant seals and seal lions, lots of hawks, some big magpies with flashy flying displays and thousands of ground squirrels. The views of the coastline are magnificent. We soon arrived in Gorda, where we stopped to take pictures of the town sign. Gorda was the last name of my best man and friend, Arnie, who has regrettably passed away. I miss him. We took a couple snaps to send to his widow.
We continued north through Nepenthe, an artistic enclave. Nice views but terrible building foundations. This place sort of marks the beginning of Big Sur, a grove of redwood trees covering a few thousand acres. This part of the world is pretty and maintaining the posted speed limit is hard due to the scenery. We were nice and pulled out for those behind us trying to get through the scenery as quickly as possible.
After about another hour of pulling out to enjoy the sights and to reduce tailgating, we arrived in Carmel, where, strangely, Clint Eastwood used to be mayor. I’ll bet that was weird. Folks in this municipality have very nice houses or estates or castles. In Carmel, we turned southeast on a county road called G16 for the passage back over the coast range to 101. This road is mostly two-lane but long sections are one lane only so driving is slow since the corners are very sharp and inclines steep. After passing through the town of Carmel Valley, we pulled up next to a big grassy field with a very healthy-looking bobcat calmly hunting for rodent nibbles. He was beautiful.
G16 wanders for about 40 miles through the coast range, passing over a pass at about 2200 foot elevation. The views along this road are amazing and I would love to take this rural track again, time permitting. We finally made it back to 101 where we turned south for the 70 mile drive back to Paso Robles and the road noise.
A few shots of our travels are available if you click here