West Coast Road Trip | Day One: Passing Through Amazing Big Sur!

It all began by an email from Foursquare describing best road trips in United States. Going north through Pacific Coast Highway is one of them. I was waiting for couple of months and finally made it happen! I had an amazing week on road up to Canada border. I`ll write about them in a week and let you know what happened during my road trip.

Getting ready for road trip

Me and my friend got a Hyundai Elantra which has a low fuel consumption, and enough space for two with lots of things to carry. Including a 3-person tent, two chairs (which we never used!), sleeping bags, propane stove, some dishes and food to eat. Where to stay? We really had no plans for that! Anywhere we can sleep is going to be OK (and we spent 2 nights in car, which is no big deal!). Camera, 2 pair of shoes, laptop, and sets of cloth are our other equipments for this road trip.

West Coast Road Trip | Day One: Passing Through Amazing Big Sur! — It took almost 400 miles to arrive at Monterey. Time estimate is almost 9 hours, but it took us much longer to arrive there!

Pacific Coast Highway begins from south California, and finishes in Leggett city. From that point, in continues as freeway 101. The beauty of Pacific Coast Highway is that it cross beside Pacific Ocean and in almost all times, you have sea and jungle in your view. The time that we picked is somehow a crowded time. It is just before schools start, so people are all around enjoying their days off just before go to classes again.

For this road trip, we are highly dependent on our smartphones and internet connection. Google Maps and other apps are of those necessary tools we used all the time to go along the road and find places to eat or visit. Because of lack of connections during the road, I saved offline maps on Google Maps, making sure we don`t get lost. I highly recommend to have several maps and spot finding apps at hand, sometimes there might be a mistake with one, which can be solved by other app. Also, never rely on time estimation done by Google Maps. It always take longer to arrive!

Let`s Go!

We started driving through Pacific Coast Highway from Santa Monica. This is the road that takes you to Santa Barbara and Solvang. We arrived by Lompoc city at noon, and took West Ocean Avenue to have lunch at Ocean Beach Park.