This article is day seven of an eight part series featuring a great American family road trip. Traveling and “getting out of the box” are essential to staying inspired and living a full life. This West Coast road trip was the most visually exciting trip I had been on in a long time. On day seven, we ventured south on Highway 1 from beautiful Carmel, California to Santa Monica.
After taking one last look at Carmel City Beach, we headed out of town early on a Friday in August. It was difficult to get out on that cool and cloudy morning. It didn’t take long for the beautiful coastline to work its magic as we ventured south on Highway 1 from Carmel. We saw dramatic, sheer cliffs; winding roads, steep hills, beaches, campgrounds, windblown trees, a lone surfer, and a few houses and gift shops.
On our way south, we came across an amusing realization. About one in 10 cars we passed was a Ford Mustang! From south of Carmel, no car made its presence more noticeable.
Named after the Spanish phrase “el sur grande” or “the great country of the south,” we found that Big Sur Coastal Highway was very similar to Highway 1. Both possessed heavy character and natural beauty combined with curvy closed and a lot of hills.
It was also amazing to see what some people were willing to do to live near the ocean. In areas miles away from any service or convenience, there would be a lonely house on a bluff overlooking the sea. As much as I love the ocean, I have my limits; but to each his own right?
As we continued on from the Big Sur area, we wanted to see the Hearst Castle in San Simeon. It would have been a nice addition to our road trip; However, we voted, and as fun as it sounded, we were overloaded from the past few days and ready to make it to our destination for the night, Santa Monica.
We kept going, but we saw the castle from Highway 1. Perched on top of a hill facing west towards the Pacific Ocean, it must have an amazing view. We’ll save it for next time.
Although we didn’t make it to Hearst Castle, we did visit another place suggested by my son: Avila Beach, just south of San Luis Obispo. When we found it a bit crowded for our liking, we headed to a less crowded Olde Port beach. A very nice beach with a lot of space. We needed our cameras’ zoom lenses to see the pier there; it was the longest I had ever seen.
We spend our short time on the beach enjoying the scenery and feeding the seagulls, before moving on to the nearby farmer’s market to stock up on fruits and vegetables.
Then he went to Malibu. To get there, we went through Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Oxnard. At that point we needed to keep going, so we didn’t do much in those towns other than wait for the traffic to move.
We weren’t planning on doing much in Malibu either, but we wanted to at least check it out. I once heard someone say that everyone in the world wants to live in the United States, everyone in the United States wants to live in California, and everyone in California wants to live in Malibu. I thought that was a bit of a stretch, but Malibu wouldn’t be a bad place to have your PO Box.
It was much bigger than I thought it would be, and of course it had beautiful homes, beaches, surf shops, restaurants, and gift shops that you would expect to see. We also pass Malibu High School and Pepperdine University. It sure seemed like it would be a challenge to study on the same days as the scenery was better than you might think.
On the seventh day of our west coast road trip, we ended up traveling about 350 miles. Although I was exhausted, I was also outnumbered, and by 9:00 pm I found myself back in our Jeep and headed for the Santa Monica Pier. There were amusement park rides, people fishing off the pier, and quite a few interesting characters hanging around. It had a good vibe, although I thought it was mainly for children. Overall it was a fun thing to do and watch and my favorite part was the teens playing volleyball on the beach on a Friday night.