Days 15 and 16: A Home By the Ocean (Cruising PCH)

"I wanna build a home by the ocean
Underneath the sky, gonna leave the door wide open
So I can see everything, gonna build a home by the ocean
Buried in the sand, gonna leave the door wide open so I can sing"

- "The Architect" by O.A.R.

On Saturday, July 7, we got back in our car after leaving it parked for two full days!  We drove to the other side of San Francisco to hop onto Pacific Coast Highway (PCH).  When we reached the Pacific Ocean on the opposite side of the city, we were treated to some spectacular views that would become everyday life for us for the next few days.  The photo above is at the Lands End Lookout Visitor Center at Point Lobos, which is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.  This stop got us our first National Park stamp on our National Parks Passport for this trip!  

We left San Francisco behind us by jumping directly onto Pacific Coast Highway.  The first stretch of our driving for the day had a lot of traffic, which wasn't surprising since it was a beautiful Saturday morning over a holiday weekend.  But we were surprised at how undeveloped the area was.  Beaches on the right, farmland on the left.  We would have expected this beautiful area to be prime real estate and much more developed, but it was pleasantly void of hotels, restaurants, or much of anything at all!   We did find a small town to have lunch in - Mexican food!  Yum!  After lunch, we came across the beautiful views pictured above.  This is Pigeon Point Light Station and hostile.  Nothing else around but the ocean, the cliffs, and this gorgeous lighthouse and humble hostile.  They are working hard to restore the light and the building itself so it can shine over the water again some day in the future. 

We reached our destination - Asilomar Conference Grounds - just before supper time.  This was a great find!  Today it is a state park, but it was originally a YWCA Leadership Camp.  Many of the buildings are the original buildings.  The grounds are quiet and simple with lots of nature and not too much extra development.  There was a pool, but nobody was using it with the whole Pacific Ocean staring at us!  There was no air conditioning, however the temperature year-round doesn't tend to rise out of the 70s very often, so we were quite comfortable!  The view and the restful atmosphere were the perfect conditions for Kerri to get in a good run!  We definitely wished we could have spent a second night here, but they had already booked solid since the time we reserved our room, and we needed to keep moving on down the coast anyway. 

On Sunday, July 8, after eating breakfast on the conference grounds, we left Asilomar to continue our journey south.  RJ thought that we might be near the Laguna Seca Raceway - "Home of the Corkscrew" - so he plugged it into the GPS and we decided to head that way.  This was another surprisingly low-key find for another area that you would expect to find highly developed and overly expensive.  It cost us $5 to get into the race track for the day, and there was a Porsche club using the track.  We were able to park down by the grandstand area to watch the racing and visit the gift shop.  We were also able to park and walk through the park - the grounds the race track is on is a county park - to see the action on "The Corkscrew" up close.  In the picture above, RJ is posing in front of "The Corkscrew" which is a three-story drop for the drivers while navigating some serious turns.  Click here if you want to see RJ's video of the Porsches playing on the track.  

Warning!  Language in the song playing in the video above!

After leaving Laguna Seca, we hopped back onto PCH to see the Big Sur area.  As you can see from the video above, this area is just the most beautiful, serene, and again...surprisingly REMOTE!  We knew in advance that we wouldn't be able to drive straight through to our destination because of a land slide a few years ago that still has part of the southern portion of the route closed.  But we made time to make the trek anyway, knowing we might have to drive two hours in and turn around and drive the same road two hours back out.  The views and the driving were well worth it!  We had tried to reserve a night of "glamping" in this area, but it was already booked solid when we tried to make our reservation.  After passing by the campgrounds, we will definitely be back!  It is hard to believe that an area that is so incredibly beautiful manages to stay so remote, but the canyons allow this to remain true.  

Speaking of canyons, we were in for a pleasant - but slightly hair-raising - surprise once we reached the end of the road.  We turned around, and RJ put our destination in the GPS.  Instead of trying to take us back where we had come from, it directed us onto a very small, canyon road that would lead inland.  We decided to give it a try, and boy was that an experience!  We were navigating steep, narrow, curvy roads all the way up and over the mountain.  Neither of us was worried about our car's ability to handle the road, but what was concerning was the number of rental RVs coming down the mountain at us, burning up their brakes on the way!  While all published information for tourists tells you there is no way in our out except for the northern entrance of PCH, the good old GPS still sends unsuspecting motorists over this road.  Our excitement didn't end when we made it to the bottom of the mountain.  Once we were back on flat land, we entered Fort Hunter Liggett, a fairly secluded military base that welcomes you with signs warning motorists to stay in their cars - explosives in the area - absolutely no cell phones or photography.  Oh boy!  Who thought we'd see a sign like that on this trip?!

Once we were safely out of Fort Hunter Liggett, we came to know a different part of California - the inland part.  The temperatures quickly rose well past 100 degrees on the inland side of the mountains.  Where there wasn't desert, strangely, there were...grapes!  You could drive through miles of dry, barren land, and then suddenly discover a vineyard full of well-irrigated grapes.  When we turned off the highway to head back toward the coast, it was a sweltering 113 degrees.  Fifteen miles later, we were pulling into the seaside town of Morro Bay, and it was back down to 64 degrees.  Unbelievable!  Later that evening, as we were waiting in line for the most delicious, fresh-caught fish and chips we've ever had at Giovanni's Fish Market and Galley, we met a local couple who had driven in for the night to escape the extreme inland heat.  They explained to us how frustrated they and their neighbors are with the vineyards, because the amount of irrigation they require is drawing down the water table hundreds of feet, causing all of the neighbors to have to drill new wells and causing land in the area to sink considerably as the water draws lower and lower.  Morro Bay turned out to be another awesome find!  The sea lions (see photo above!) barked on the water all day and night, which was new to us!  The water was perfect for boating and kayaking, and the views were, again, spectacular.  The town actually reminded us a lot of Wildwood, New Jersey, when we were kids.  Most of the lodging was well-kept, inexpensive motels.  There were plenty of local eateries both on the main strip along the water and spread out throughout the town.  But there were also small, private houses tucked just off of the main streets, and town got pretty quiet once the sun went down.  This was definitely a place we would have liked to spend more time!  

The San Francisco to Morro Bay stretch of our trip was probably our favorite part of California.  Hopefully, we'll see this view again some day in the future!