Features

United States of America - Headin' down to Big Sur...

by Mike Levy

If California has a fault don’t blame San Andreas – blame the tourist office. So much of the state is little known outside the USA.

The industry focuses its marketing on what we already know: Spend a day in jail at Alcatraz; Hollywood – home of Universal Studios, South Cal = Disneyland…Yeh yeh yeh…but thanks to a very generous offer of a long day trip by car from Palo Alto, we were able to see a lot of wonderful places that don’t get top billing (OK some of them do). Anyway our friends took us south from Silicon Valley, down the coast to Big Sur. This has to be one of the most spectacular drives in the world – the legendary Highway 1.

The first stop on the 10-hour return journey was Santa Cruz, a handsome and scholarly looking place – home of University of California, Santa Cruz. Here also is your first glimpse of that wonderful coastline. So much of it, as here, is protected by State Park status so that it is very far from being spoiled.

Actually my first glimpse of the Pacific was through the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, California’s oldest amusement park with its original 1920s big dipper. Very quaint and all rather innocent in a family seaside of yesteryear kind of way. The wooden amusements seem a million miles from Silicon Valley – though it is only an hour away.

Highway 1 then heads south along a wide sweeping bay beside miles of come-and-feel-me soft sands. Next stop is Monterey – an interesting coastal town whose very name conjures up California cool. Before WWII it had a less than fancy reputation as the centre of the state’s sardine canning industry. Steinbeck celebrated this period in this novel, Cannery Row. The rows of old warehouse buildings are still there but the tin cans have long gone, replaced by souvenir shops, touristy boutiques and smart restaurants (where canned sardines are not on offer).

Monterey has two other historic buildings of interest – The Royal Presidio Chapel (1794) and the house where Robert Louis Stevenson lived for a time. I didn’t manage to get into either building but would welcome any readers who have experienced them. The other place we didn’t have time to see was the famous Monterey Aquarium – ‘unmissable’ I was told but we had to miss it. Next time eh?

Meanwhile the road ahead beckoned; the stunning scenery of Point Lobos State Reserve and Big Sur itself. I have spent too much time on this first leg...that’s my fault.

In picture: The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk Amusement Park, and Monterey Cathedral.