SAVORING ANOTHER CALIFORNIA COASTAL TIDBIT

Tidbit Number 2

Perhaps the most magnificent interface of land and sea is just a pleasant day’s jaunt from our new Sonoma County digs.

Monterey’s Big Sur Coast offers exhilarating roadways with sweeping turns carved above a rugged shoreline occasionally tunneling through groves of eons-old redwoods.

Mornings may be shrouded in a gray blanket of moisture.

While afternoon views across the Pacific are often accompanied by howling winds off the sea and each turn offers a new expansive view.

The route is dotted with campgrounds, modest general stores, motels, curio shops and galleries.  We found a VRBO rental and home-based there for a couple of days.

Accesses to beach, grasslands and forestlands are plentiful, but you’ll pay a modest fee for their support. 

Still, it’s good to get off the saddle and discover the little things that are often lost to panoramas. 

The history of the on-going collision between the North American and Pacific plates predates humankind.  (We’re west of the San Andreas rift.)

But humankind has left our share of markings.

Sometimes functional.

Sometimes beautiful.

Sometimes simply odd.

Sad to say that in nearly fifty years of motorcycling, this was my first two-wheeled visit along this section of Highway 1. 

On this trip, we did not travel further south past Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park toward Lucia, San Simeon and Harmony. 

Perhaps this is why – along with this magnificent section of coastline – God created the term “Bucket List.”

© 2015

Church of the Open Road Press