Why this ride
A 212 km one-way ride from near Carmel Valley Village, about 2 h 49 of riding. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Pacific Coast Highway: Big Sur Bixby Bridge to San Francisco
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 212 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 2 h 49
- Journey
- One way; return travel is separate
Distance and timing basis
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Scenic road chapters
Pacific Coast Highway, California State Route 1
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 29 km this is Pacific Coast Highway, California State Route 1, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Chapter facts
- Length
- 29 km
- Named road
- Pacific Coast Highway, California State Route 1
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Big Sur Bixby Bridge
Bixby Creek Bridge is the best-known single structure on California's coast, a pale concrete arch spanning a deep canyon where the road crosses from one cliff to another. It was completed in 1932, a graceful open-spandrel arch about seventy-nine metres above the creek, and it was built to end the isolation of Big Sur, a stretch of coast so rugged that until the road came, residents relied on the sea or mule tracks. The whole of Highway 1 through Big Sur was finished in 1937, after years of work, some of it by convict labour, and it remains one of the great engineering achievements of the American West.
Read the complete Big Sur Bixby Bridge write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Big Sur Bixby Bridge is where the day begins. Next is Monterey.
2. Monterey
Monterey is a town with a layered past, and the best way to read it is to walk from the old adobe buildings of the first capital of Spanish and Mexican California to the shiny aquarium on the water's edge. Spanish explorers anchored in the bay in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, and Monterey served as the capital under Spain, then Mexico, and briefly under the United States. Colton Hall, where California's first constitution was drafted in 1849, still stands in the middle of town.
Read the complete Monterey write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Monterey comes up about 29 km into the recorded legs. Next is San Francisco.
3. San Francisco
San Francisco hits you with its hills first. The city sits on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific and the bay, and the streets climb and drop at angles that make a fully laden motorcycle feel like a mountain goat. The Golden Gate Bridge, completed in 1937, spans the mouth of the bay in International Orange paint, and when the fog rolls in from the Pacific, as it often does in summer, the towers rise out of the white like something from a dream.
Read the complete San Francisco write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
The route ends here after 212 km.
Leg by leg
Big Sur Bixby Bridge to Monterey
Big Sur Bixby Bridge → Monterey is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Monterey to San Francisco
Monterey → San Francisco is 183 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.