Route 1 to San Francisco

So maybe this day wasn't planned as well as it could have been. We knew it would be a long day, bud damn. I forgot to mention in my last post, we spent a total of 2 hours stopped in traffic at the Sequoia Park. Apparently they are doing road work at 4000 ft elevation on a section of the 2 lane road that we took in and out of the park. They do this buy closing one lane and making the road one way for stretches of time. They had a long section closed off like this so we were in a long line waiting forever to get in then out again. Little did we know, this traffic pattern would become a trend in our trip. I'll explain in a bit.

So we left Three Rivers, CA and headed a bit southwest to the vicinity of San Luis Obispo. Our route was taking us straight up the California coast on the 1. On our way we drove through some wine country. We didn't know we would be driving past all the wineries and vineyards, otherwise we would have allowed time for a tasting or two. Needless to say it was a beautiful sight to see though. The rolling hills covered with swaying grasses or rows and rows of grape vines were beautiful. This was not the fastest or straightest shot we could have taken, but well worth the time it took. Breathtaking. That's the best word I can think of to describe the views from route 1. The Pacific ocean is beautiful blue green, and the waves that we saw that day were huge and crashing violently against the rocks and cliffs. We had to stop several times along the way to just get out and take in the views. It's just crazy driving right along the coast line, when straight down from the road is the water. Not much room for error, especially when directly on your other side is a rocky cliff rising straight up as well. Unfortunately, they were doing work on this road as well, and we got stopped again to wait for traffic the other way to come through. Not fun when you're already road weary. Big Sur was the highlight of this drive for us. The famous vistas that we've all seen tons of times on car commercials were all over this place. Matt had a little too much fun driving it in our mini van though...I'm sure he would have much rather been driving a Corvette or something.

Finally we reached San Francisco. Monterey and Santa Cruz were beautiful, but by that point we were just ready to be done driving for the day. So far, what we've seen of San Fran looks neat. Definitely a town like I've never seen before. We're gonna do some exploring today and tomorrow. If it's in San Francisco, chances are we're gonna try to see it. Wish us luck.