Erik Zinn

I am glad you had an enjoyable drive.

Welcome to California - some of our Interstate highways are worse then gravel roads. Sometimes it seems like they are just contiguous ribbons of cold patch these days. Nice that you hit it while the hills are still a little green.

Hopefully Highway One will be open all the way through Big Sur the next time you hit it.

napacruzerc5

Long day but glad you enjoyed it. Hopefully your CF friends steered you right.

MSG C5

The Forum never lets me down. I knew car guys would steer me right.

I basically broke the trip down into four sections and reset my iPhone Nav four times; (1) S.F. - Carmel/Pebble Beach, (2) Carmel to King City & Highway 101 connection, (3) King City to Ventura and PCH (1), and (4) Ventura to Dana Point via PCH (1).

Boomer111

Well you even took time to stop and take pictures.

It was a full day of driving I expect. I was figuring you would lay over a night. Otherwise I probably would not of suggested the entire route you took.

Carmel Valley road is a nice change from the coast. Think about pulling through there in a 18 wheeler! I have done it a few times.

I recognize all the stops for pics along the coast. I drove Santa cruz to SF almost daily making 3 round trips up and down HWY1 for the last few years of my driving commercially.

Not as fun when starting out at at 5am in the Winter and having coastal fog and the night to deal with. Have hit many animals along this route.

All the beach gores too in the Summer are a nuisance sightseeing. With 80,000 lbs I need to ascend the hills and keep a reasonable pace while doing so. Always one car screwing this up. Then watch the cars stack up behind me and try passing on corners.....never a dull drive for sure.

MSG C5

^^^ Yep, last year I got an early start out of S.F. around 5:30 AM and worked my way down PCH all the way to Malibu and arrived around 4PM. No 17-mile tour, just straight PCH.

This last trip, I didn't leave S.F. until about 10:30 AM and then drove PCH down through Monterey/Carmel and the 17 Mile Pebble Beach Tour. That, with my Carmel Valley Road detour, probably cost me an additional 2.5 hours, but it was worth it for the view. Plus, I stopped and took a lot of pictures.

After stopping for gas and dinner about 8PM, I didn't roll into Dana Point until about 9:30 PM so the last two hours was night driving.

I can't imagine driving an 18-wheeler on Carmel Valley Road. There were some definite blind corners.

Next year, I plan on an earlier start time and hopefully PCH will be open in its entirety so I don't get stuck on 101 for 250 miles. I really don't mind taking the long day trip as it's much better than battling the airport shuffle both in S.F. and L.A. for a one-hour flight. Both SFO and LAX have off-site rental car hubs which add on at least another hour to the travel schedule. Basically I'm trading 4.5 hours of airport shuffle headaches for 9 hours of scenic driving.