Our PCH Road Trip: Driving the Coast

The fifth day of our trip we woke up, ready to cruise the Pacific Coast Highway!

Our first stop was only about an hour down the road to the Santa Monica Pier where we rented a couple of bikes and road from the pier all the way down to Venice Beach and back.

 After about an hour of hanging out in Santa Monica we hit the road again and onto.....

....Santa Barbara! This is the moment I wish I was an actual photographer. I spent more time making videos than actually taking any quality pictures, so I apologize for the lack thereof.

Let it suffice it to say that Santa Barbara is a very lovely place, and I quite enjoyed all of the Spanish-colonial style architecture of downtown. The white stucco contrasted with red-tile and dark wood is very pleasing. We stopped and ate at a convenience store deli, and with no time to waste we hit the road again.

Our next stop was Pismo Beach. Whose name sounded vaguely familiar to me as we rolled into town, but I couldn't quite place it. Apparently it is world famous though, so maybe that's why it rang a bell? We drove down to the beach where we found an abundance of sand dunes and rednecks with their trucks and trailers. American flags flapping in the wind from the bed of their trucks. It all felt very patriotic (and strangely not at all like we were in California), and my small town husband felt right at home.

After hitting up the beach we dropped into a tiny little 'ma and pa' Ice Cream shop and got ourselves milkshakes and headed back onto Highway One.

I was majorly disappointed to find that the Big Sur section of Highway 1 was closed due to mudslides and so sadly once we got to San Luis Obispo we had to turn onto Highway 101 for the rest of our journey towards Monterey :( 

Big Sur was pretty much #1 on my list of things to see, and as we drove we realized we simply did not plan enough time to stop at all the amazing places there are along Highway 1. Needless to say we will be planning another Highway 1 road trip for the future, so we can see all the wonderful things we missed, like Hearst Castle, Big Sur, the Madonna Inn, etc. etc. There was just so much to do and we had too little time!

Anyway, here is the video I made of our trip, I took way too few photos, but more videos, so here you'll be able to see more of the PCH.

Stay tuned for the next installment of our trip... Monterey and Carmel!