Pacific Coast Highway

The pacific coast highway - number 1 drive in the world (for rally drivers maybe)!
Well our adventure began before we had even left rainy San Francisco (yep, it was still raining), we, or I navigated us up the wrong way of freeway 101, so that we were heading north to the Bay Bridge. Luckily Alan had the foresight of hiring a GPS navigation system with our huge monster of a car, so within a few minutes of programming it, we were off down highway 1 aka the pacific coast highway.

San Francisco to Monterey was a wet but nice drive, it took us about 3/4 hrs with a little stop for lunch along the way. We stayed in a Motel 6 just outside of Monterey that night.

On sunday I felt we should have a big breakfast before setting out on the second leg of highway 1. Well, let me tell you what a mistake that was.......
The Monterey to Santa Barbara section of highway 1 is ALL hairpin bends and sheer drops to the ocean! It was a white knuckle ride! We crawled along most of it doing no more than 20mph and even then it felt a little too fast for my liking, especially when Alan is looking a little nervous and "oh shit" keeps coming out of his mouth.
About an hour and a half later when we are both looking green from the constant winding roads, the road straightens out and the hills (or mountains) disappear. We were driving alongside the ocean and we stopped to get some fresh air and have a look at lots of sea lions and their babies basking in the sunshine (yes, it had finally stopped raining).

Although the second section of the Pacific Coast Highway made us more than a little nervous ( and that was generally because we were in an automatic car, which had a mind of its own), the scenery and views are breathtaking. The ocean was turquiose in places and the waves were huge. There was also lots of places to pull over and take photos.

We spent sunday night in Santa Barbara and got there before it got dark, so we walked along the pier and watched the sunset, and the oil rigs. Santa Barbara also has quite a few bars that we frequented too.