(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
12 secret stops on California’s iconic road to Big Sur
You’re in a hurry to see Big Sur, which makes sense. There’s no place like it.
But the coastline on the way is remarkable enough to make a destination in itself. And often it’s a more affordable, less crowded destination.
Even you’ve already done the most obvious attractions — Hearst Castle in San Simeon, for instance — why not spend more time exploring roadside nooks and ocean-adjacent crannies as you go?
Driving this stretch of Highway 1 is still one of the most amazing things you can do in California. Here’s how to find hints of history along the way.
It’s 56 miles between San Luis Obispo (where most of us leave U.S. 101 and hop onto Highway 1) and the Ragged Point Inn, the gateway to Big Sur. I made a couple of trips up there in the last two months, and these are my 12 favorite findings.
Showing Places
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
1. Go luxe at the Hotel San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo Hotel
If you haven’t visited in a while, you haven’t seen SLO’s new high end. The Hotel San Luis Obispo opened on Palm Street in late 2019, aiming to add some luxe luster to a college town with cowboy leanings. The pandemic posed a challenge, but this 78-room “modern urban resort” has survived, along with its two restaurants (Ox + Anchor and Piadina) and bars on the patio and rooftop. Its location means you can do all your downtown exploring without a car (loaner bikes are included) and you’ll have a spa and a pool on hand for hot days. This sleek style carries a price that will send a lot of people running for the hills — weekend rates for most rooms are $459 to $629.
The similarly stylish 65-room Hotel Cerro, which opened on Garden Street in 2020 with Brasseries SLO on site and a pool on its roof, has comparable prices.
Looking to spend a little less? Cal Poly parents get “up to 25%” off at the Hotel SLO and at the Hotel Cerro.
Looking to spend a lot less? The basic, friendly Peach Tree Inn on the city’s Monterey Street hotel row usually has weekend rooms for $200 to $250 (and often weekday rooms for half of that).
The similarly stylish 65-room Hotel Cerro, which opened on Garden Street in 2020 with Brasseries SLO on site and a pool on its roof, has comparable prices.
Looking to spend a little less? Cal Poly parents get “up to 25%” off at the Hotel SLO and at the Hotel Cerro.
Looking to spend a lot less? The basic, friendly Peach Tree Inn on the city’s Monterey Street hotel row usually has weekend rooms for $200 to $250 (and often weekday rooms for half of that).
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(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
2. Saddle up by the Madonna Inn
Experience
You know the Madonna Inn. It’s the place along U.S. 101 in San Luis Obispo with the hot-pink sign, the kitschiest dining room this side of Graceland, the 110 thematically decorated rooms (no two alike) and the waterfall in its men’s room. But did you know about its horses? The Madonnas turn out to be a very horsy family, and there’s a trail ride operation right next to the hotel, which sits on about 1,000 acres.
Whether or not you want to sleep in the Caveman Room ( Room 137), Love Nest (Room 183) or Old Mexico (Room 196), you may well enjoy clip-clopping up 1,292-foot-high Cerro San Luis Obispo (a.k.a. Mount Madonna) on an hourlong trail ride. As you climb, the rolling hills will spread out around you, the wind may toss your horse’s mane, you’ll probably glimpse 25-acre Laguna Lake below and your guide may share his most recent rodeo results. Madonna Inn Trail Rides are open to novices and experienced riders, ages 7 and up. Cost is $75 per person, reservations required.
Whether or not you want to sleep in the Caveman Room ( Room 137), Love Nest (Room 183) or Old Mexico (Room 196), you may well enjoy clip-clopping up 1,292-foot-high Cerro San Luis Obispo (a.k.a. Mount Madonna) on an hourlong trail ride. As you climb, the rolling hills will spread out around you, the wind may toss your horse’s mane, you’ll probably glimpse 25-acre Laguna Lake below and your guide may share his most recent rodeo results. Madonna Inn Trail Rides are open to novices and experienced riders, ages 7 and up. Cost is $75 per person, reservations required.
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(Stephen Heraldo / Downtown SLO)
3. Roam the Downtown SLO Farmers Market
San Luis Obispo County Farmers' market
The Downtown San Luis Obispo Farmers Market, which dates to the early ’80s, is a great way to see (and taste) that city at its best.
On Thursday nights at 6, five blocks of SLO’s main drag, Higuera Street, are closed so people can browse from stall to stall. At full strength, the market includes more than 100 vendors, assorted artisans and live entertainment. There are farm-fresh chicken, ribs, pulled pork, corn on the cob, cheese, mushrooms, honey, Korean barbecue and that particular crescent-shaped bit of beef, best when grilled over red oak, known as tri-tip.
Note: There’s no farmers market on Thanksgiving.
As long as you’re downtown, you could admire Bubblegum Alley (it’s just what it sounds like).
On Thursday nights at 6, five blocks of SLO’s main drag, Higuera Street, are closed so people can browse from stall to stall. At full strength, the market includes more than 100 vendors, assorted artisans and live entertainment. There are farm-fresh chicken, ribs, pulled pork, corn on the cob, cheese, mushrooms, honey, Korean barbecue and that particular crescent-shaped bit of beef, best when grilled over red oak, known as tri-tip.
Note: There’s no farmers market on Thanksgiving.
As long as you’re downtown, you could admire Bubblegum Alley (it’s just what it sounds like).
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(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
4. Wake to lapping waves at the Shoreline Inn, Cayucos
San Luis Obispo Hotel
Cayucos is a sleepy beach town — in part because it’s small and mostly invisible from Highway 1 and also because many of its homes are vacation rentals, often idle. This (along with a handful of good restaurants) makes it a tempting place for a beach getaway. The Shoreline Inn on the Beach, one of several lodgings along the main drag, completed some ambitious renovations this summer. The inn is on the beach, and all of its units have views of the beach and pier. I had a spotless upstairs room in its Beachfront building — 180 degrees of ocean view, at a cost of $289 plus taxes. The well-designed room had a beachy feel, high ceiling, desk, armchair and big TV. If you’d rather save $140 a night and sleep a block inland, try the Cayucos Beach Inn, where rates are roughly $145 to $275.
I only had about 12 hours in town on my last visit, so I didn’t get to the widely admired Brown Butter Cookie Co. or much-admired Cayucos Sausage Co., but I did get a splendid dessert (carrot cake) at Lunada Garden Bistro, which has a pleasant courtyard and a fine cup of coffee from the Sea Shanty, which is the town’s old-school breakfast joint of choice. (It also has a lively patio and a fine collection of baseball hats hanging from its ceiling.)
I only had about 12 hours in town on my last visit, so I didn’t get to the widely admired Brown Butter Cookie Co. or much-admired Cayucos Sausage Co., but I did get a splendid dessert (carrot cake) at Lunada Garden Bistro, which has a pleasant courtyard and a fine cup of coffee from the Sea Shanty, which is the town’s old-school breakfast joint of choice. (It also has a lively patio and a fine collection of baseball hats hanging from its ceiling.)
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(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
7. Hang out in tiny, quirky Harmony
Town
This 2.5-acre “town” (population 18, the sign says) is above all a chance to step out of your car for a few pleasant minutes, just north of Cayucos, just south of Cambria. Its restored old buildings offer wine-tasting, glass blowing (when there’s a glass blower around), pottery, a chapel (weddings happen) and a Harmony Valley Creamery food truck peddling lunches, snacks and ice cream at $9 a pint, Tuesdays through Sundays. There’s also a little red cottage that’s rentable for about $200 through Airbnb.
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(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
8. Build a driftwood palace on Moonstone Beach
Beach
Moonstone Beach collects driftwood. Which means that an enterprising beachcomber can gather up stick and bits, lean them together and wait for the photographer from Architectural Digest to show up. And even if the photographer doesn’t make it, you’ll have a new relationship with the beach. (Although you won’t be the first. Along the shore, you’ll see many efforts.)
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(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
9. Hide away in White Water on Moonstone Beach
San Luis Obispo Hotel
The 25-room White Water, a Lodge on Moonstone Beach, is a recent creation — a 2020 merger and update of two older, not-quite-adjacent motels on Cambria’s Moonstone Beach Drive. (There’s a fenced-off grassy empty lot between the hotel’s north and south buildings.) The exteriors are gray-black, the interiors full of beige and Danish modernity. My room also included a 1974 issue of Art in America and a fireplace oddly tucked away in a corner by the bathroom door, but no desk. I found the front-desk staffers upbeat and helpful. Staffers bring all guests breakfast pastries and coffee in picnic baskets each morning (left discreetly at your door; this is a romantic-weekend sort of place). Also, there’s a supply of bicycles you can borrow for pedaling along the beachfront. Fall rates are roughly $300 to $600.
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(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
10. Spread out (and play horseshoes) at Oceanpoint Ranch
San Luis Obispo Hotel
This lodging at the north end of Cambria’s Moonstone Beach Drive, once known as San Simeon Pines, has a lot of advantages, beginning with its 9-acre, beach-adjacent, wedding-friendly, kid-conducive site. It’s got more space than any other lodging along the beach. There are 61 units, pool, shuffleboard, horseshoes and a casual Canteen restaurant. It’s got a ranch theme (and some units have fireplaces), but it also has 50-inch TVs. Fall rates are roughly $160 to $500.
If you’re thinking of getting dinner at Seachest Oyster Bar along Moonstone Beach, as many visitors do, you’ll need to line up at the restaurant at 5:30 p.m. to put your name in for the evening. They don’t take any other kind of reservations. Nor do they take any payment but cash. Yet the 5:30 p.m. line can stretch to 100 people, even on a fall weekday.
If you’re thinking of getting dinner at Seachest Oyster Bar along Moonstone Beach, as many visitors do, you’ll need to line up at the restaurant at 5:30 p.m. to put your name in for the evening. They don’t take any other kind of reservations. Nor do they take any payment but cash. Yet the 5:30 p.m. line can stretch to 100 people, even on a fall weekday.
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(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
11. Watch seals bask at Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery
San Luis Obispo County Attraction
Out of water, the northern elephant seal is as ungainly as a creature can get — thousands of pounds of blubbery, damp, stinky flesh, caked with beach sand, prone to molting, belly flops and mating frenzies.
So, of course, you want to see them. And winter is prime time at Piedras Blancas, where hundreds of these seals at a time bask, spar, give birth and mate on a ridiculously beautiful stretch of state-controlled undeveloped coastline seven miles north of San Simeon.
It’s free and open every day. There’s a parking lot and boardwalk (wheelchair accessible), usually patrolled by a few volunteers. While you marvel, stay at least 25 feet away from the hulking beasts. Keep dogs and drones away altogether.
They’re called elephant seals because of the large proboscis grown by the adult males (which get up to 18 feet long and 5,000 pounds).
In November, thousands of the males begin showing up after months in the open ocean, to skirmish over dominance. In December, pregnant females start gathering in “harems” around dominant males. In January and February they typically give birth, followed by the resumption of mating a few weeks later.
So, of course, you want to see them. And winter is prime time at Piedras Blancas, where hundreds of these seals at a time bask, spar, give birth and mate on a ridiculously beautiful stretch of state-controlled undeveloped coastline seven miles north of San Simeon.
It’s free and open every day. There’s a parking lot and boardwalk (wheelchair accessible), usually patrolled by a few volunteers. While you marvel, stay at least 25 feet away from the hulking beasts. Keep dogs and drones away altogether.
They’re called elephant seals because of the large proboscis grown by the adult males (which get up to 18 feet long and 5,000 pounds).
In November, thousands of the males begin showing up after months in the open ocean, to skirmish over dominance. In December, pregnant females start gathering in “harems” around dominant males. In January and February they typically give birth, followed by the resumption of mating a few weeks later.
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(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
12. Sleep above a sea cliff at Ragged Point
Hotel
Yes, the gas prices are high here — about $7.39 per gallon when the statewide average was $6. But in Big Sur they get higher still. And the Ragged Point Inn complex, gateway to Big Sur, has a lot to offer as a last stop before you turn around or continue north, taking on the high, narrow, winding miles of Highway 1. Some of the inn’s 39 hotel rooms are perched right above a (fenced-off) 350-foot sea cliff. (November marks the beginning of year’s lowest room rates, $179 to $299 through Feb. 28, children welcome.)
You can get a $34 halibut dinner in the restaurant or a hamburger at the snack shop for $7.50. And there’s a (very steep) trail down to the shore that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone with kids or with shaky knees.
One other Ragged Point asset: Pay phones. Cellphone coverage is notoriously scant from here through Big Sur, and outside shops and restaurants you will encounter more pay phones than you’ve seen in a decade.
You can get a $34 halibut dinner in the restaurant or a hamburger at the snack shop for $7.50. And there’s a (very steep) trail down to the shore that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone with kids or with shaky knees.
One other Ragged Point asset: Pay phones. Cellphone coverage is notoriously scant from here through Big Sur, and outside shops and restaurants you will encounter more pay phones than you’ve seen in a decade.
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