Having moved to the Bay Area recently from the East Coast, my fiance and I had been planning
to visit our friends down in Los Angeles (LA) for a while. More importantly, we wanted to do this roadtrip via the Pacific Coastal Highway (PCH) or Highway 1 or California 1 (CA-1), as people would call it differently. This is rated as one of the most scenic highways of the country and has been on our travel list for a while.
For people unaware of the PCH, it's the highway that runs along the West Coast of the USA, with pristine views of the Pacific Ocean.
At different points of this gorgeous highway are many historic landmarks and major cities, like San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Malibu and Los Angeles. All of the roads we took on this journey were toll-free. Here's the itinerary of our 3-day road trip:
The Pit Stops
Based on our personal likings, recommendations from friends, and sleepover cities, we decided to make Santa Cruz, Monterey Bay, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Big Sur, Morro Bay, Solvang, Santa Barbara, Malibu and Los Angeles our stopping points. We used the bag shown below for this special journey. You can buy this and other amazing bags from the Amazon picture link below
Santa Cruz (Stop 1)
Since we currently live in the East Bay area of San Francisco (SF), we decided to make Santa Cruz our first stop. However if you start this roadtrip from the SF city, we recommend visiting the 'Half Moon Bay' first, before coming down to Santa Cruz. You can find more about it here https://www.visithalfmoonbay.org/
Now back to our roadtrip, Santa Cruz (much like most of the west coast beaches) is known for its beautiful beach and boardwalk. The cold waters of the Pacific are not very conducive for swimming most days, unlike the East Coast beaches in summer. However, it's an ideal day trip spot for people living in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley as it's only a stone's throw away and has a host of beach activity one can engage in, most of which is family friendly.
Since it was the beginning of summer we decided to spend a couple hours on the beach and get some vitamin sun. Then we played some classic boardwalk games. Not having enough luck in winning the stuffed toys after our failed shooting attempts, we moved on to have some of the delicious garlic shrimp fries on the boardwalk, after which we headed to the Monterey Bay area, our next stop. You can find more about the boardwalk here https://beachboardwalk.com/
Monterey Bay and Carmel by the Sea (Stop 2)
Monterey Bay, well actually the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Cannery Row was the next thing we wanted to check out. For people who do not know, the aquarium in Monterey Bay is one of the best in the country (as per many travel websites). So if you're one of those who loves sea life, this should definitely be a place to visit on your itinerary. The tickets costs $50 for an adult (at the time of writing this blog). For more on this visit https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/
There's a host of seafood restaurants and souvenir gift shops on Cannery Row, which make it definitely worth spending a couple hours at.
After the visit to Monterey, we decided to get our late lunch in the neighboring city of Carmel-by-the-Sea. If you're a fan of vintage art and good old fashioned cottages, the downtown area of this city should definitely be on your list.
Coming back to the food, the city is also known for its seafood. We chose Flaherty's Fish Market and got ourselves one of their best selling sandwiches (They also serve you free home made bread and butter on the table!). After lunch we checked out the Carmel Fine Art Gallery where we saw some extraordinary pieces of art (well at least the price was, with some paintings costing a whopping $65,000).
Post filling ourselves up with seafood and successfully avoiding damage to any of those expensive art pieces, we headed to our next stop, the 'Big Sur'.
One thing I'd like to mention here is that we avoided going through the '17 mile drive' which comes before the Big Sur southbound on PCH for two reasons. One, we wanted this roadtrip to be toll free (the gate fee for this section of the drive is $10.50) and two, I had already visited the 17 mile drive on a previous visit to the area. It's definitely something I'd recommend you to do if this is your first or only visit. You can find more information here https://www.visitcalifornia.com/attraction/17-mile-drive
Big Sur (Stop 3)
Before we get to the beauty of the Big Sur, we'd like to share some of the noteworthy overlooks/vista points that one should consider stopping at, if they have some time to spare.
These places are the Calla Lily Valley, Garrapata State Beach, Notleys Landing and the Bixby Creek Bridge. Below is a picture of the Carmel Highlands beach where we decided to make a stop and stretch a little. Pictures of the above mentioned vista points follow.
And finally we made it to the Big Sur, one of the star attractions of the PCH and definitely on many people's checklists. One word of caution here, if you are going during a long weekend or during the holidays expect the cops to rush you (based on traffic), and not let you stop. You have to plan this right and have some luck on your side to get to stop and get a good view of the iconic bridges on the way, as many people stop here and park illegally sometimes to get those instagram pictures. We were lucky and were able to stop at a couple spots around the Big Sur to get some mind boggling shots of the ocean. Here's a few:
Big Sur is a part of the 'Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park' and is a pretty good camping spot. It gets pretty busy during long weekends/holidays so make bookings well in advance if that's your plan. You can find more details here: https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=570
Morro Bay (Stop 4)
Note that we decided not to stop in San Simeon, Cambria or Cayucos which are also popular stopovers on this road trip after the Big Sur southbound, and decided to make Morro Bay our final stopping point on the road for Day One.
The most famous spot in the Morro Bay area is the Morro Bay Beach which includes the Morro Rock, an ancient volcanic mound. Also an interesting thing to note here is you can see some sea otters swimming in the Bay on a lucky day. The Rock on its own looks no different than a regular 400ft. hill but the sunset in this area is special surrounded by the sea life.
At the end of a long day on the road and multiple stops we decided to sleepover at one of our friend’s place in Lompoc, a small city northwest of Santa Barbara.
Ostrichland and Solvang (Stop 5)
After getting a good night's sleep and catching up with a friend in Lompoc, CA we were up bright and early to restart our journey down the PCH to LA. The next stop on the list was the city of Solvang, but before I get to that I'd like to share a hidden gem we found on the way to Solvang called Ostrichland. Ostrichland is a wildlife refuge mainly for Ostriches and Emus. They have about a 100 of them on site. Visitors can pay $5 to enter the place and checkout the beautiful big birds from a close distance and if you like to feed them you can purchase the feed for $1 per bowl. This was a pleasant surprise for us bird lovers and we didn't think twice before pulling in to checkout the largest and fastest birds in the world. For more info. visit https://www.ostrichlandusa.com/. Here's a sneak peek:
After feeding the big birds we realized we hadn't fed ourselves that morning so we wanted to grab breakfast first thing when we reached downtown Solvang.
This is a good time to share some background on Solvang and why it made our list. Let's start with the name Solvang, which means 'sunny field' in Danish. Back in 1911 this city was founded by a group of Danes who wanted to resettle in the west, far from the brutal midwestern winters. Although the city was built by the Danish, today its believed that only 10% of the residents of the city have Danish ancestry.
Enough of the history and back to food run. While on the road we use Yelp to lookout for restaurants like most people and found that Solvang had a ton of bakeries and breakfast serving restaurants. As I mentioned before about long holidays, we realized most of the top rated breakfast places were jam packed (pun intended) with tourists so we decided to settle for some Danish delicacies for breakfast. A decision that I would never regret.
We walked into the http://www.mortensensbakery.com/ and tried some of their mouth watering free samples. Just after a bite we knew what we wanted for breakfast and ordered a Danish Eclair, Fruit Pastry and the Pistachio Square. After having these food items I can say one thing for sure: the Danes definitely take their baking seriously and are pretty good in making these products which not only look out of the world but taste like a million dollars. We decided to go for another round of these items but had them packed for the road trip to save on time.
After the heavy calorie meal it was time to burn it off so we started our stroll down the beautiful streets of Solvang. Some notable picturesque spots here are Solvang's Round Tower and Windmills, Little Mermaid Statue, Hans Christian Andersen statue (the person who wrote the fairy tale on the Little Mermaid) and the Danish homes. Overall if you want to explore a little bit of Europe inside the US this is the place. Here's a few pictures:
Santa Barbara (Stop 6):
We were Santa Barbara bound around noon of Day Two after having gotten enough of little Denmark. We decided to take a slight detour and checkout the Lake Cachuma, which is an artificial lake which was created by the construction of the Bradbury Dam in the 1950s. All along this lake there are wonderful views of the adjacent hills and also a few trails. Having stopped here, we met an older couple who educated us about the artificial lake and also how they've been monitoring the levels of water since its one of the sources of drinking water for Santa Barbara County, where they were from. Here's the view:
About a 30-minute ride from the lake is the city of Santa Barbara, which has the longest south-facing section of the coastline on the West Coast. The city is also referred to as the "American Riviera" for its Mediterranean-like climate, and because it has a rich Spanish history most of its architecture is inspired from Spain.
That's enough history on the place and back to being a tourist. Thanks to the couple we met at the lake, we got to know about an art event that happens once a year called the 'i-Madonnari' which is an Italian Street painting festival in the Santa Barbara Mission which was happening this weekend. With my fiance' being an artist I didn't have any other option but to go there with her. I must say though, I was pleasantly surprised and would have been kicking myself had I missed this. Here's a few pictures from the event to justify that statement:
On the way back to the car and not knowing the city enough, we ran into what is called the 'Mission Rose Garden' probably the best Rose Garden I've seen in an open public park. They had a plethora of roses in all kinds of colors. Just being surrounded by hundreds of roses made the environment more cheerful and joyous as was evident from the people and puppies in the garden. Here's a few good shots from the garden:
Onto the next beautiful location of this city, a US National Historic Landmark, the Santa Barbara Courthouse. The architect who built this called it "the grandest Spanish Colonial Revival structure ever built" and for a good reason, it has an exquisite architectural design in and out. The surrounding garden of the courthouse contains a collection of palms and specimen trees from more than 25 countries. The best view of the city can be taken from the "El Mirador" clock tower, which has labeled photographs that show what the viewer is looking at in all directions. The courthouse buildings also had a jail onsite which is now converted into a tourist site and a venue for weddings. Here's a few pictures from this gorgeous location:
The next stop after this courthouse was the 'Sterns Wharf', rated the number one attraction of this city on a few websites. It is a historic pier with many restaurants, gift shops and excellent views of the city in the background where you could catch the many yachts and ships coming in and out. You can find more info. here http://stearnswharf.org/
If you're a fan of crabs and calamari you're in for a good time on this pier with multiple options. Speaking of which, we grabbed some of the best fried calamari and seafood sandwich at The Harbor Restaurant. Here's a few shots from the view we had:
Malibu (Stop 7)
After the long and beautiful day in Santa Barbara we headed southward on the PCH to Malibu. This is a place where most of the Hollywood stars and other A-listers have multi-million dollar mansions. It's also home to some beautiful beaches like the Surfrider Beach, Zuma Beach, Malibu Beach and Topanga Beach to name a few. Interestingly all the houses here are within a 100 yards from the PCH and most of them have a view of Pacific Ocean (hence the big bucks I guess!).
We were elated to have a friend who lives in one of these fancy homes in Malibu. He gave us a good tour of the mostly gated/access restricted area. We ended up spending our night in Malibu and couldn't complain about the view.
Santa Monica (Stop 8)
After a goodnight's sleep we headed to Santa Monica, probably the most famous beach of the coast, thanks to it being the home of the Pamela Anderson starrer Baywatch. The beach itself isn't very different than any other beach I've seen in the States but the boardwalk here is special. It is more famously known as the Santa Monica Pier. They have an amusement park on the pier with the iconic Ferris Wheel that everyone identifies with Santa Monica. It also has huge carousel and a Playland Arcade. You can find more about this beautiful pier here https://santamonicapier.org/
Interestingly this pier is where the historic 'Route 66' comes to an end and the site makes for amazing travel pictures.
Here's a few snaps from the scene:
Los Angeles (Stop 9)
Our final stop and the destination of this entire roadtrip was Los Angeles. Now, Los Angeles on its own could be a blog topic (probably some other day) so here I'll try and only capture the highlights of the day and a half we spent visiting the city.
The first place we visited in the city was the Griffith Observatory, which according to many travel websites is rated as the number one thing to do in LA. This observatory has some interesting collections from outer space as well as good depictions of our Solar system. However the main reason most people visit this place is to get the best view of the city, as the observatory over-arches the entire city of LA with all its glitz and glamor. Since we visited the observatory in the night, the view was amazing and I could imagine it being not as pleasant during the day. However on the flip side if you visit this place in the day you could get a very good view of the Hollywood sign (and probably save yourself a hike to see it separately). We also spotted a coyote strolling around at the entrance of the observatory.
One important insight we'd like to share here is that even though the entry to the observatory itself is free, the shuttle you take to get there from the base of the hill will cost you 50 cents per person in cash. We found this a bit annoying since we (like most people) don't carry quarters while traveling.
The next spot was the Hollywood sign which is arguably the most iconic thing in the city of LA. One should note that getting to sign itself is a decent hike and leads you mostly through a residential area and narrow roads. We found that the best view of the sign is actually from the base of the hill where the roads start getting narrower.
'Hollywood Boulevard' and 'Sunset Boulevard' are two streets in the downtown area of LA which are pretty iconic as they have many of the star attractions of the city, namely the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Wax Museum to name a few. There are also a ton of restaurants, gift shops and nightclubs on these streets which makes it famous among all ages.
Here's a few pictures from this starry city:
We ended our three-day roadtrip by making the Hollywood sign our last stop, as it connects to Interstate 5 in a few miles. This made our return trip to the Bay Area more convenient.
We hope you got some good information and insights reading this blog about the roadtrip on the iconic Pacific Coastal Highway.
Feel free to share this page and information with friends and family embarking on this beautiful adventure.
P.S. This post is about our experiences and our recommendations. None of the places or links are endorsements, they're only shared for ease of access to a future traveler.
You can buy High Definition Cameras we used to shoot the pictures above from the Amazon picture link below