DAY FOURTEEN

SAN JOSE, CA – PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY – SAN DIEGO, CA

515 MILES. LEFT SAN JOSE: 2:30PM, ARRIVED SAN DIEGO: 2:30AM.

Today, we left Lily’s house in San Jose to start our journey down south. We first stopped by downtown San Jose to see the Winchester Mystery House – a place where Sarah Winchester continued construction for 36 years straight, and is reported to be haunted. 

 

Winchester mystery house

Santana Row, San Jose

We drove around Santana Row, and then hopped onto the high way to get to Monterey, CA. The weather turned pretty overcast and chilly as we made it to Monterey, but it was really nice to see the Pacific Ocean for the first time on this trip! Monterey has a really interesting style, it was for a long time a sardine packing town, so now “Cannery Row” is the touristy area, and a lot of attractions are in old factories. 

From here we drove about 15 minutes further to get to Carmel-by-the-sea a super fancy and pretty little town which seems to be centered around the beach and shopping! The flowers everywhere in California are such an attractive touch, and it really makes everywhere seem so nice. 

We got onto the Pacific Coast Highway from here, and after driving a few miles, the road started hugging the coast and offering some of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen. The road was narrow and curvy, one side viewing the ocean, and the other mountains and thick trees.

 There are a bunch of overlooks where we pulled over, and we finally got to Big Sur after about an hour on the road. Big Sur is a place that I’ve been dreaming about going for years, after seeing a picture of it in a bathroom, and I was so excited to finally be there. The road got especially curvy, and there was an amazing string of coves and rocks in the water. We were on a mission to reach Partington Cove, which I read about in a guide book. And we made it around 7:30 pm. We got so lucky, and the weather cleared out to offer a clear blue sky, and a beautiful sunset. We hiked down a dirt hill to reach the best view of the cove, and it was truly amazing.
 

The cove has a beach, with clear blue crashing waves, a waterfall, and caves surrounding it. We couldn’t stop staring at it to take it all in. After a while, as it was getting dark, we had to keep moving, because the next place to get off the highway was in 56 miles. This road is not exactly the best place to drive in the dark, especially if you’re not into falling off a mountain. I was under the impression that route 101 ran next to the PCH, and it would be easy to switch off at any point, but that was not at all the case. We, by chance, ran into a beach full of elephant seals. 

This was cool, but they seriously smell bad and make gross sounds. We finally got off, and onto some other remote highway, until we finally made it to the interstate. We still had about 5 hours to drive, and at this point it was 10pm, but Kenny was up to the challenge. I couldn’t help but doze off a few times, but we eventually made it to San Diego around 3am!