Of all the wonderfully scenic drives across America, and there are plenty, perhaps no other is as romantic and wild as the Pacific Coast Highway that parallels, and sometimes hugs up close, California’s spectacularly dramatic coastline.
Stretching from Seattle to San Diego, the whole of the PCH is roughly 1,800 miles long, but the California section that meanders from Mendocino County to just south of San Juan Capistrano is considered the heartbeat of the highway. Along the way, it passes through several wine regions including Sonoma and San Luis Obispo, San Francisco where it crosses the Golden Gate Bridge, and farther south through Monterey, Big Sur, Carmel-by-the-Sea and San Simeon.
A PCH trip is one to be savored and unhurried. The road is serpentine, coiling for those hundreds of miles among small villages and towns, towering rocks, jagged cliffs, surf-carved beaches and staggering mountains that plunge straight into the Pacific. Evening drives are the best, when the setting sun alchemically transforms the ocean into shimmery pools of gold. Oftentimes, you can catch glimpses of whales, dolphins and seals underneath the wings of a trillion seabirds gliding along the shoreline.
