Thanks, everyone, for the tips. We returned last night a bit before 10 pm.
A brief rundown of what we did ( because I KNOW you’re all itching to find out):
Left Huntington Beach shortly after noon on Sunday. Took the 1 through Malibu, Ventura County and Santa Barbara, then hitched up to the 101 to Buellton for a couple of bowls of soup at Pea Soup Andersen’s. Gassed up and made a short jaunt to Solvang, just to get a feel for how far it would be, promising ourselves that we’d hit it again on the way down (spoiler alert: we didn’t). Stayed on 101 almost to Salinas, then cut west back to the coast and our motel in Monterey. Rolled in at 9:45, checked in and experienced our first king-sized bed in at least twenty years for both of us.
Dawdled Monday morning away, then drove to Pacific Grove for breakfast. After a couple of hours in a gift shop, we decided to take a chance on the 17-mile drive. We made a few stops for pictures and to hear the crashing surf, seals, and cormorants, and to smell the salt air. At about four miles from the end, we saw a turnoff for Carmel-by-the-Sea, which we took, promising ourselves to re-enter after we’d explored the place (spoiler alert: we didn’t). Visited an art gallery we couldn’t afford, and found a wine-tasting room that we could. It was getting late when we asked a local to direct us back to where we’d left the 17-mile drive. The directions instead brought us back to Pacific Grove (dammit), so we found a steakhouse and got dinner, then back to the motel.
We left the room a lot earlier on Tuesday, and drove thirty miles south to Big Sur. I learned the joys of buying gas at 6.50/gallon, and bought a bunch of souvenirs. Joan joined me in that endeavor as well. We also found that something had broken on her wheelchair and the right side of the seat wasn’t stretching out all the way unless I held pressure on the handle. Joan can ambulate, with assistance (and I had left her walker in the motel, so I did a LOT of assisting). She had been told by her nephew that Cambria is beautiful, so I drove the ninety miles along Hwy 1 to there. It’s a beautiful drive, but awfully scary, and I had white knuckles for nearly the entire distance. Tried to pull into Hearst Castle, but it was closed, so we proceeded to Cambria. It’s a lovely, bucolic community, but next time we go there, we’re gonna have to get a list of the high points from Joan’s nephew. We did find another winery that could accommodate a tasting, and got another couple of bottles, then headed back up Hwy 1 to Monterey. The area had become very foggy, but at least I was on the mountain side of the road instead of the cliff side, so not quite as scary. We found a roadhouse in Big Sur Center that had the most wheelchair-inaccessible building I’ve ever encountered (even if the chair isn’t broken), so we took a picture with a moderately-sized redwood and proceeded back to the motel where we ordered a pizza delivered (Pelican Pizza, if you’re ever in Monterey. Would order again), and crashed out again.
We got back on the road at the 11:00 am checkout time and drove up to Roaring Camp near Santa Cruz, where I got some shots of Joan communing with a slice of redwood trunk about five-and-a-half feet in diameter. That was as close as she came to hugging a redwood. Headed back to San Luis Obispo, had a late lunch at the Madonna Inn, then pointed the Prius at Santa Barbara. My iPhone evidently thought it would be funny to put me on a treacherous-feeling road called the Chumash Highway. I’m sure it’s a very nice highway, but at night there are way too many people driving in the opposite direction with their brights on, and there are way too many twists and turns for that.
Finally got back to familiar territory around 8:30 and fell into our bed where we slept like Frodo Baggins when he and Sam ditched the orcs on their forced march (like a dead thing. We slept like a dead thing).