Snap, Crackle, Pop!

When we'd had enough of LA and Hollywood and Beverly Hills, we got on the road to head to San Francisco.  Our plan was to drive up US Hwy 1 along the Pacific Coast.  I started driving, and we decided to go North quite a ways before cutting across to the coast.  After a couple of hours, my eyes were getting heavy, so Scott took over at the wheel.  Must have been all the excitement of Rodeo Drive the night before!

It was while I was dozing that it happened!  We were off the interstate driving to get onto Hwy 1 when Snap, Crackle, Pop with emphasis on the POP!  A truck passed us going the opposite direction and threw a huge rock at our windshield giving us a half-dollar size smash.  When we got to the next little town, we were able to find an auto parts store to get a glass repair kit hoping to repair it well enough to keep the cracks from spreading… at least until we got home and could have the windshield replaced.  Fortunately, it worked, and we were back on the road in less than an hour.

We made it over to Hwy 1, and it was as expected – a gorgeous drive!  In my research, I found out that there was supposed to be a beach right off of the highway where elephant seals hung out.  A few miles up the coast, we spotted them.  They were enormous!  And they were just all piled up like lazy slugs sprawled out all across the beach in the sunshine.  Some of them were playing, but most of them were sacked out.  I haven’t had a chance to look it up yet, but we couldn’t figure out why they kept flipping sand up on their bodies while they were resting.

Elephant Seals basking in the sun

Isn't he cute?  Looked like he was smiling at us.

These two were causing quite a ruckus!

We got back on the road to head up the coast, although our GPS, who has now been dubbed “Big Mouth Bertha,” kept telling us to “Make a legal u-turn.”  We finally had to turn her down because for several miles she kept repeating the same thing, “Make a legal u-turn, make a legal u-turn.”  Talk about annoying!  We wished we had listened.  In all my research of driving up the coast, not once did anything mention that once you are on it, you are on it.  We realized that, according to Big Mouth Bertha, our estimated time of arrival to San Francisco changed dramatically as we were going up the coast, but we thought we’d just “pop” on back over to the interstate when we got tired of driving the winding, cliff-hugging highway.  Once Big Mouth Bertha stopped telling us to make a legal u-turn and decided to reroute us the way we were adamant on going, it was too late.  We were committed.  And it added about five hours to our trip.  Now don’t get me wrong.  The views were beautiful!  The seals were a lot of fun to watch.  I got some great pictures (see below).  But at this point in our trip, I’m not sure that turning a four hour drive into a nine hour drive was our most brilliant idea… especially since it put us at our hotel close to midnight… in San Francisco.

Can you see the lighthouse overlooking the ocean?

Needless to say, we slept in the next morning!  But the girls were troopers and did a great job with our scenic detour.  Ashlee handled it by taking lots of pictures… Emilee handled it by going to sleep!  It’s definitely a drive I would recommend when you have no other agenda and can take your time to stop along the way when it gets dark and start again the next morning.  I would have loved to have taken Hwy 1 from bottom to top... we just don't have the time on this trip.