The Pacific Coast Highway Road Trip Guide: California's Most Unreasonably Beautiful Drive

There is a stretch of road in California, running broadly speaking along the edge of the continent, at which the Pacific Ocean arrives with the sort of emphatic grandeur that makes one feel the planet is, on some level, showing off. The Pacific Coast Highway road trip is not merely a drive. It is, for those who have experienced it, a recurring event in one's dreams, and occasionally the reason one moves to California entirely.

The route runs roughly 650 miles from San Francisco in the north to Los Angeles in the south — or the reverse, depending on one's philosophical disposition toward sunsets. There is no wrong direction. There is, however, a great deal of wrong planning, which is where most road trips come unstuck.

San Francisco: The Starting Gun

San Francisco recommends itself as a starting point for several reasons, foremost among which is that leaving San Francisco southward allows one to keep the ocean on the right, which is the correct side for maximum scenic impact. The city itself, with its hills and fog and unreasonable quantity of excellent coffee, serves as an admirable staging post.

Departing via the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn, when the fog is doing its theatrical best and the bridge rises out of it like something from a Norse legend, is an experience that costs nothing beyond the petrol and sets the tone for the days ahead with considerable authority.

GPSSquad will plan the entire route in roughly two minutes, which frees one up to address the genuinely important pre-departure questions: the playlist, the snack situation, and whether to bring a jacket to a state that cannot reliably agree on what temperature it intends to be.

Big Sur: Where the Road Gets Ideas Above Its Station

It is at Big Sur that the Pacific Coast Highway road trip reveals its true character, which is that of a road that has decided the ordinary rules of geography do not apply. The cliffs here are of the sort that geologists describe in technical terms and everyone else describes by going quiet and staring.

The 90-mile stretch through Big Sur takes considerably longer than one expects, because one stops. One stops frequently and at no particular warning, because the scenery presents itself around corners with the brazen confidence of a theatre company that knows it has the best material. Bixby Creek Bridge arches over its ravine like a sentence that begins grandly and delivers on the promise. McWay Falls tumbles directly onto the beach below, 80 feet of waterfall that has apparently decided the ocean was worth visiting personally.

The practical note here — and there must be practical notes, however much they interrupt the reverie — is that Big Sur has essentially no petrol stations and limited phone signal. Plan accordingly, or don't and discover it the instructive way.

San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara: The Civilised Middle

San Luis Obispo arrives with the pleasant surprise of a town that has remembered it exists to be lived in as well as visited. The Thursday Farmer's Market, which occupies several blocks of Higuera Street, operates with the cheerful intensity of a small festival that happens to also be selling excellent strawberries.

The Hearst Castle at San Simeon is worth the detour if one is inclined toward the sort of architecture that occurs when a very wealthy man decides that restraint is for other people. The castle sits on a hill like a statement, which is precisely what it is.

Santa Barbara, arriving in due course, presents itself as a city that has decided to be uniformly white-walled and terracotta-roofed and make no apology for it. The effect is of driving into a rather upscale California dream sequence.

Malibu and the Final Approach to Los Angeles

Malibu performs the considerable trick of being simultaneously a road, a beach, a series of celebrity addresses, and a state of mind. The Pacific Coast Highway runs directly through it, the ocean on one side and the Santa Monica Mountains on the other, and the whole arrangement feels less like a road and more like an editorial decision.

The transition into Los Angeles is gradual enough that one does not quite notice it happening until one finds oneself stationary on the 10 Freeway, at which point the Pacific Coast Highway road trip has, strictly speaking, concluded and the LA experience has begun.

The honest timing: Allow five days minimum. Three days is possible; three days is also a crime against a route that deserves better.

One could, of course, attempt to coordinate the stops, fuel points, overnight stays, and scenic detours entirely from memory and optimism. Or one could let GPSSquad plan the whole thing in two minutes and spend that time researching Pismo Beach clam chowder. The choice, as always, is yours — but one of these options has a considerably higher success rate.