Highway 1 may be a clichéd American road trip but it's the best way to see the west coast
IT’S 4am and we stumble on just one other traveller on our trip into the heart of Yosemite — a brown bear, crossing the road in the midst of its early morning routine.
We stop dead in our tracks as the bear simply shrugs and shuffles off back into the trees nonchalantly. Apparently it left a far greater impression on me than I did on it.
Luckily, most of the other encounters on our trip — a journey down the Pacific Coast Highway — were a little friendlier.
A well-worn route, the 500 or so miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles meanders along a stunning coast, stopping in a handful of sleepy little towns and surfing haunts along the way.
Striking cliffs give way to tumbling waves and some of the most photographed scenery in the United States, with the unforgettable Big Sur right at its heart.
It is a remarkable way to take in the Californian landscape, which is impressive in its variety.
From the striking valley at Yosemite to the crisp white beaches of Santa Barbara, Santa Monica and Malibu - it’s not hard to see why so many travellers return to follow the footsteps of Jack Kerouac and others each year.
Add in a few days at Yosemite National Park before hitting the open road and you’re on to a winner.
Possessing many of the most jaw-dropping views in the world, Yosemite really has to be seen to be believed.
From giant sequoias to huge, soaring mountains, it is a must for anyone who enjoys the outdoors, an ideal place to wander for a few hours to collect your thoughts — just watch out for the bears.
A short trip west brings you right back to the heart of San Francisco.
Far more relaxed than most other US cities, San Fran (as the locals hate to call it) boasts an impressive array of restaurants and coffee shops in a very small area.
The seafront is also well worth a look. Think bobbing seals, swooping seagulls and a thousand restaurants selling huge bowls of chowder.
Get the right seat and you’ll snag yourself one the best views in the world — the Golden Gate bridge to your left, Alcatraz to your right.
Even more impressive is the view from the other side.
Sausalito, one of a number of smaller towns worth visiting in the Bay area, gives a view of the bridge and the prison, but with the gleaming white San Francisco at its rear. If you’re in town, it’s simply unmissable.
But, as time presses on, we have to make our move.
‘Riding the One’, as some locals call it, has become a rite of passage for thousands each year.
The coastal road —Highway 1 —is every bit the clichéd American road trip.
Leather- clad bikers overtake on every turn, with sleepy diners and friendly waitresses around every corner. Mustangs and convertibles, most driven by over-eager European tourists, flood sections of the road, which is flanked by huge expanses of rolling desert and the Pacific Ocean.
The brown bear of Yosemite is not the only wild encounter we have on our trip, with a pod of whales greeting us just as we turn onto Highway 1. Breaching whales just as the sun sets overhead... it’s almost laughable, but it’s exactly the kind of thing you’ll find here.
Further down the coast, the encounters become a little more human. Unlike their counterparts on the east coast, Californians are quite content to sit down and watch the world go by.
Much of New York is hustle and bustle, with even the hipster havens of Brooklyn and Williamsburg succumbing to it. New Yorkers are a friendly and helpful bunch, but most are in a permanent rush — even when they have nowhere to go. In contrast, most of the Californians we meet are content and optimistic, happy to sit back and let the world go past.
One offers to take us hiking in the mountains the following morning after we mention that we had been to Yosemite, others suggest joining them on surfing trips.
A third instructs us to take in an early morning farmers’ market - “Seriously, ten avocados for a dollar...” - insisting that California has the best food in the world.
There is a genuine optimism in many on the west coast, but maybe that’s what eternal sunshine does to you.
An exchange with a young waiter in a nondescript fish restaurant sums up this sunny outlook.
“D’you guys know John Madden?”
“The American football player?”
“Yeah - well, look, this is his table. So if he comes in, we might need to move you. I hope that’s okay.”
“Oh, of course! Does he come in here often?”
“No, he never has - but someday he might.”
It isn’t all sunshine and beaches, though, with things taking a turn for the worse the further south we go. White sandy beaches give way to blackened fields and trees, damaged after a spate of wildfires.
We are lucky — just a week earlier parts of the road had been closed and travellers redirected inland. Handwritten ‘thank you firefighters’ signs are everywhere, illustrating the extent of this crisis.
Plumes of smoke can be spotted all along the horizon — think more ‘Mad Max’ than ‘Good Vibrations’.
Santa Barbara ticks all the boxes of what you imagine California to be — endless beaches, less solitude and seals, more bikinis and muscles on boardwalks. It is just one of a number of towns to fit this bill, each worth a look as you wind down towards the end of the road.
Eventually, though, you do run out of road. Rolling into downtown Los Angeles, things grind to a halt.
It is a city known for its traffic woes and it sure doesn’t disappoint in that regard — short distances take hours to complete and lights change from green to red without a shred of movement.
It is a far cry from the bear-trodden woods of Yosemite or the wide-open roads of Big Sur.
In fact, north and south California are worlds apart. Separated by just 500 miles of road and some of the most iconic imagery of the world, it is hard to believe that you could start a week 3,214 feet above Yosemite on Glacier Point and end it bumper to bumper in downtown LA traffic — but that’s exactly what you get on a journey down the sweltering Pacific Coast Highway.
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