The Coast-Road Issue

Big Sur is not really a town. It is a ninety-mile stretch of California where the Santa Lucia mountains fall straight into the Pacific and Highway 1 clings to the edge of the drop, and October is the month to see it clearly — the summer fog lifted, the crowds thinned, and the light coming in long and gold off the water.

It is also a coast with almost nowhere to sleep. A handful of famous inns sit out on the cliffs — the kind with a room rate to match the view — and they book months, sometimes seasons, ahead. If they are gone, this is no trip to force; the sensible fallback is to base up the coast in Carmel-by-the-Sea and drive in for the day, which plenty of people do and few regret.

The road itself asks for respect. Fuel is scarce and dear, the phone signal comes and goes, and Highway 1 has a habit of closing after storms and slides — sometimes for a whole season. Check the conditions the morning you drive, fill the tank in Carmel or Cambria, and treat the driving as the point rather than the commute.

Then it is about the stops. Bixby Bridge on the way down, McWay Falls dropping straight onto a hidden beach, the keyhole rock at Pfeiffer with the sunset lined up through it — and lunch on the terrace at Nepenthe, hundreds of feet above the sea, which is an institution for good reason.

Vivienne Hartwell, Editor-in-Chief