This article is day seven in 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, and continued on to Santa Monica.
After taking one last look at Carmel City Beach, we left 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 steep and dramatic 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 a funny conclusion. About every 10th car we passed was a Ford Mustang! From south of Carmel, no cars made their presence known more.
We discovered that the Big Sur Coastal Highway, which gets its name from the Spanish phrase “the big south” or “the great southern country”, was very similar to Highway 1. Both had a heavy character and natural beauty combined with hairpin bends and lots 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 cliff overlooking the ocean. As much as I love the ocean, I have my limits; but to each his own, right?
As we continued from the Big Sur area, we wanted to visit Hearst Castle in San Simeon. It would have been a nice addition to our road trip; however, we did vote and while it sounded like fun, we were overloaded from the last few days and ready to hit our destination for the night, Santa Monica.
We kept going, but saw the castle from Highway 1. Perched on top of a hill looking west towards the Pacific Ocean, it must have an incredible view. We will save it for next time.
Although we didn’t make it to Hearst Castle, we did check another location suggested by my son: Avila Beach, 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 the zoom lenses of our cameras to see the pier there; It was the longest I had ever seen.
We spent our short time on the beach enjoying the scenery and feeding the seagulls, before moving on to a nearby farmers 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 had to keep going, so we didn’t do much in those towns other than wait for the traffic to move.
We don’t plan on doing much in Malibu either, but at least we wanted to 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 it 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 the beautiful homes, beaches, surf shops, restaurants, and gift shops that you would expect to see. We also stopped by Malibu High School and Pepperdine University. It sure seemed like a challenge studying the same days as the scenery was better than you 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 at 9pm I found myself back in our Jeep and headed for the Santa Monica Pier. There were rides at the amusement park, people fishing off the pier, and some interesting characters hanging around. It had a good vibe, although I thought it was mostly for kids. Overall, it was a fun thing to do and see, and my favorite part was the teens playing beach volleyball late on a Friday night.