At this point life is a road trip, but we have been staying put for a week or more and then moving on to our next stop in a day. As we left Malibu Beach RV and our family in Los Angeles we elected to turn what could have been one long looong day into three shorter days just because we could. The “normal” route from LA to San Francisco area is up I 5, about the same as Rochester to NYC on the Thruway. The next acceptable route would be to take the 101, especially since leaving from Malibu in a motorhome the only way to go is North on the Pacific Coast Highway/PCH/CA1 to Ventura. It isn’t even legal, much less safe, to take the motorhome over the canyons to get to the 101 directly.

Avoiding the reasonable and relatively direct we elected to drive as much of the route as possible on The 1. The other question was what stops to make and where to spend the nights. Having spent exorbitant sums for a site in Malibu (more than twice our average per night) we did not want another commercial campground or even a state park since California State Parks are now pushing the ceiling. I guess if you can’t raise real estate tax you get it from other sources. California makes New York parks look reasonable

Our first stop was the Elks Lodge in San Luis Obispo (SLO). I took the wrong exit and then took the wrong turn. After a turn around the block we found our way into the Lodge parking lot with 16 RV spots that back up against the 101 so we can enjoy the road noise right through the night. It isn’t quite as bad as it sounds, but it also isn’t the desert. We made a timely, for us, departure from SLO Elks at about 10 AM and promptly got on the 1 right out of town. I suppose I could recite the towns and the views we passed, but far better authors than I have written about them in novels and stretches have been seen in documentaries and movies. The road rises and falls seeking a foothold on the edge of the mountains that line the coast. sometimes you are almost at sea level and at other times the sea is far below as the road winds around yet another gorge that forms a cleft in the mountains. In places the road has been swept off the cliff by falling rocks and has been rebuilt either by clawing another foothold into the mountain or by building a bridge to carry the road along the face of the cliff. In places the road is so narrow that we felt we were going to demolish our passenger side on the rocks yet again and at times there were broad pull offs so we could let other drivers pass us.

Eventually we found a glorious pull off on the left, ocean, side where we could pause and have lunch and change drivers.

Looking back the way we’ve come

The road ahead of us seems tame

Eventually, with Carol at the wheel, we found our way into Monterey only to find once again that the GPS Navigation required us to make an illegal and impossible U turn to get to the lodge. We ended up disconnecting the Jeep on a deadend in a commercial strip so Carol could jockey the coach back and forth to get it turned around. Remembering the route from previous trips I guided her back out to the main road and up the hill to the Lodge with its beautiful windows overlooking the bay. We are set up here for one night only and chose not to venture into town as we have done that several times and the drive had tired us both.