Pacific Coast Highway: Dana Point to Big Sur Bixby Bridge

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Dana Point

   Dana Point has a better claim to literary fame than most harbour towns in Orange County. In 1835 a young Harvard dropout named Richard Henry Dana Jr. spent months hauling cow hides on this stretch of the California coast as a common sailor, and he later wrote it up as Two Years Before the Mast. He described the bluff here as the only romantic spot on the coast, and the town took his name. Today the bluff holds a headland park and a harbour full of yachts, and a replica tall ship sits at the dock as a reminder of the age of hide and tallow.

   Read the complete Dana Point write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Dana Point is where the day begins. Next is Malibu.

2. 2. Malibu

   Twenty-one miles of the Pacific Coast Highway pass through Malibu, and most of them are within sight of the sea. The road squeezes between the steep brown slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains and a narrow ribbon of sand, a mix of beach houses, small plazas, surf breaks and sudden gaps with a view over the water. The town itself has about thirteen thousand people, a city of film stars and surfers, and a strong feeling of being at the edge of something. It was once a ranch owned by the Rindge family, who held off development for decades, and the land was divided only in the 1920s, after the state forced a public road through it.

   Read the complete Malibu write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Malibu comes up about 298 km into the recorded legs. Next is Santa Barbara.

3. 3. Santa Barbara

   The Pacific Coast Highway has a way of ending in places that look like film sets, and Santa Barbara is the best of them. The city sits on a narrow shelf of land between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the ocean, facing south, which is unusual on the Californian coast, so the sun seems to hang over the water in the afternoon. The red tile roofs, white stucco walls and arched arcades are not an accident. After an earthquake in 1925 destroyed much of downtown, the city rebuilt in a unified Spanish Colonial Revival style, and the result is a place that feels more like Andalusia than Los Angeles.

   Read the complete Santa Barbara write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 539 km into the recorded legs you reach Santa Barbara. Next is Morro Bay.

4. 4. Morro Bay

   Morro Bay announces itself with a rock. Morro Rock, a smooth, rounded volcanic plug 175 metres high, stands at the mouth of the harbour, guarding the entrance like a stone sentinel. It is the westernmost of a chain of ancient volcanic peaks called the Nine Sisters that march inland toward San Luis Obispo, and Spanish explorers used it as a landmark from the sixteenth century, naming it El Morro, the crown. Peregrine falcons nest on its face, so climbing is banned, but you can walk the sand spit to its base, and the beach is a pleasant place to watch surfers and sea otters.

   Read the complete Morro Bay write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Morro Bay, late in the day. Next is Big Sur Bixby Bridge.

5. 5. 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

   Finish at Big Sur Bixby Bridge. That is the ride.