Not wanting to be elsewhere when Kelsey arrived by plane in Los Angeles, I arrived the night before to avoid any potential unpleasantness. From Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument I zipped across southern California and descended into San Diego as the sun set. Very nice! From there is was a shot up I-5 to the Santa Anna Airport where I had a reservation at a near by motel for the night.
By now I’d been on the road for about 10 days. That meant this blog wasn’t current. That meant I hadn’t been swimming in way too long. That meant I needed to sit still for a while. In 24-hours I took care of all this getting my blog current in the Newport Beach Public Library and swimming in the Public Pool next door. By the time Kelsey arrived I was ready to go again!
The game plan was simple: drive up the west coast of the United States as close as possible to the Pacific ocean starting in Tijuana, MX and ending in Victoria, BC. She’d drive as much of it as possible and she’d fly home from Portland, OR after visiting with family. We had nine days to do it. That’s it.
To start at the very beginning we drove to San Diego immediately after her arrival so we should begin the day with a cross-border jaunt, which we did. From there we drove north to Los Angeles.
In SoCal there isn’t much difference between Interstate-5, Highway 101, or Highway 1 as they’re all the same until you get north of Camp Pendleton. Starting in San Clemente they start taking their own paths and following our principle of “closest to the Pacific” we were often on the 101 or the 1 until we arrived in Santa Monica. The picture above was taken on Venice Beach.
That night we roamed the pier, walked the waterfront, took in the Third Street Promenade then slept in an HI Hostel just two blocks from the beach. Early the next morning we were off to continue up the coast. The night’s goal: Santa Cruz.
This was a great stretch as the weather was perfect, the coastal driving very interesting and we were able to stop at missions and piers along the way. Two missions were Santa Barbara and La Purisima near Lompoc, the latter had been rebuilt to the way it was originally. San Luis Obisbo, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz were all fun towns to explore and the latter had charming piers.
Driving the winding ocean cliffs of Big Sur was probably our favorite activity and one of the only stretches of road that Kelsey didn’t do all the driving.
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