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California's Highway One, Big Sur Part 1
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Big Sur coastline, courtesy Big Sur Guides at www.BigSurGuides.com
On ForbesTraveler.com, Joe Yogerst writes, "Alfred Hitchcock could not have conjured a scarier highway—122 miles of vertigo between Monterey and Morro Bay. Two lanes for nearly its entire length, the road meanders along cliff tops poised high above the Pacific, including 33 bridges and countless drop offs into liquid oblivion. Anyone faintly squeamish should not attempt to drive this route."
Although the Big Sur section of world-famous, scenic California Highway One does run ninety unrelentingly curvy miles from Carmel to San Simeon, it is one of the most spectacular and rewarding roads on the planet. Adventurers with plenty of time on their hands set off, cameras in hand, for the drive of a lifetime, through the sparsely developed coastal wilderness of Big Sur, a misty, magical mountain kingdom fringed with precipitous cliffs above craggy beaches sparkling with waterfalls.
Until 1937 when the two-lane road was carved and blasted into granite mountainsides, this section of the coastline was inaccessible and virtually unknown. Spanish explorers called it El Pais Grande del Sur––the big country to the south––and they declined to brave the harsh topography dominated by the Santa Lucia Mountains that lunge in thousand foot cliffs into the sea. Most of today’s travelers venture just a few miles down the road, exploring forest trails in California State Parks and searching for the spectacular scenes they have seen in photographs.
Spring through fall, Big Sur enjoys higher temperatures than Carmel and Monterey (the departure ponts for the Big Sur drive south), receiving more rain, yet also more sunny days. Winters can be treacherous, when rock and mudslides and torrents of water may block the route. The drive is not to be taken after dark on a moonless night, or when thick fog obscures the road and the spectacular sights. Anytime, day or night, deer and other wildlife frequently wander onto the road.
Crossed by nearly thirty bridges over deep canyons and the Big and Little Sur River valleys, the road is sprinkled liberally with vista points, where one can take a break from white-knuckled driving and drink in a panorama of ferocious ocean surf smashing into natural arches and sea stacks, stony guardians of ancient shores. Making for stunning photos, the Bixby Creek Bridge, also known as the Rainbow Bridge, is a two-hundred-sixty-foot single-spanner. At low tide, the skeletons of shipwrecks are sometimes visible far below the bridge.
(This is an excerpt from the upcoming book by Karen Misuraca and photographer Gary Crabbe, entitled Backroads of the California Coast.)
Stay tuned to this column for Part 2 of the Big Sur Great American Road Trip.
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