For years, the stretch of Highway 1 just north of Montara was the road everyone worried about. Devil's Slide, a crumbling headland of rock above the Pacific, kept sliding into the sea and closing the highway, sometimes for months. Since 2013 the traffic has passed through a pair of tunnels bored through San Pedro Mountain, and the old road along the cliff has become a walking and cycling trail with some of the wildest views on the San Mateo coast. If you have twenty minutes, walk a piece of it.
Montara itself is a small, quiet coastal community at the foot of Montara Mountain, with wooden houses scattered up the slope and a wide, sandy state beach below the highway. The Point Montara lighthouse, a slender white tower, stands on the bluffs just south of town. A little further on, at Moss Beach, the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve protects rocky reefs and tide pools where, at low tide, you can see anemones, crabs and starfish, and sometimes harbour seals hauled out on the rocks.
The ride along this part of Highway 1 is classic Northern California coast. The road winds along the cliffs and through small towns, with the Pacific on one side and green hills on the other. In summer, fog often hangs over the coast in the morning, burning off by midday, and the temperature can be ten degrees lower than in the Bay Area just over the hills. The road is busy on weekends with cars and cyclists, and the surface varies from smooth to bumpy. Watch out for sudden stops near the beaches and viewpoints.
Montara is too small to have much in the way of services, but El Granada and Half Moon Bay, a few miles south, have fuel, restaurants and cafés, and Pillar Point Harbor is the place for fish and chips by the boats. The beach here is beautiful but the water is cold, the surf can be powerful and rip currents are common, so swim only if you know what you are doing. Sitting on the sand with a coffee, watching the surfers and pelicans, is a safer pleasure.