Alluring California coastline calls as wild road trip route of Highway 1 reopens after three years

“We got our Big Sur buddies back,” offers Brian Flaten, stirring a negroni beneath a mounted moose head at Legends Bar in Morro Bay, California.

At midnight on a recent evening, the dimly lit bar where Flaten is a bartender beckoned drivers off Highway 1, long after the rest of the world had gone to bed on this lonely stretch.

But there was something to celebrate. After three years, Highway 1 was open again. As of this February, drivers could once again travel the full length of the iconic road after a series of landslides that began in 2023 severed the road 175km north of here.

Shawna Hawkins arrives at Legends Bar with her son and niece after driving south from San Francisco. “I wanted to feel the sand under my feet again,” she says. “It’s been too long.”

Highway 1, which lies between the restless Pacific and steep mountains, is less a road than a narrative — a sequence of tightening curves, widening horizons and vertiginous reveals that make up one of the world’s greatest road trips, rhapsodised about by everyone from John Steinbeck to Jack Kerouac. As you drive north from Morro Bay, you may get the uneasy sense that the mountains and sea are only grudgingly allowing a road to pinch between them.

On a recent morning the lack of traffic was surprising. The highway felt almost private, something long-time drivers here can hardly remember.

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Just 30 minutes north of Morro Bay, Hearst Castle rises from those mountains — an elaborate arrangement of towers and terraces.

Built by media tycoon William Randolph Hearst over three decades starting in 1919, the estate has always felt slightly detached from its surroundings — a European fantasia set above a Californian wilderness.

Before Highway 1’s closure, a visit usually required making a reservation days in advance. On a recent morning, walk-in tickets were readily available. I joined the Upstairs Suites Tour and found myself alone with a guide.

I’ve been many times before. But this time, without the usual crowds, details emerged with unusual clarity — Hearst’s red velvet monogrammed slippers waiting in his closet; a pair of paintings of Napoleon Bonaparte by Jean-Leon Gerome hanging in a remote anteroom; the newspaper hangers in the palatial office where editions from around the world were flown in daily so Hearst could guide his empire from this wilderness.

Attendance is up only slightly — about 13 per cent above what it was last year — but guide Diana Binnewies says she noticed the difference. “Before, it skewed heavily toward Southern California,” Binnewies says. “Now I see a lot more diversity in viewpoints and dress.”

North of Hearst Castle begins one of Highway 1’s most distinctive soundtracks — the barking of elephant seals. They flop along the shores and outcroppings along the highway, providing a contralto to the constant roll of the surf.

One of the best places to see them is the Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery, where hundreds of seal elephants sprawl out on the sand like tourists on a package trip.

The soundtrack replaces mobile phone service, which vanishes for the next 250km, as you head north. It hardly feels like a loss — conversation seems beside the point in the face of such vastness.

“Big Sur is a place of splendour, a savage beauty beyond words,” wrote Henry Miller, who lived here for nearly two decades.

Further up the highway, the Henry Miller Memorial Library echoes the lingering New Age energy that hums along this stretch of coast with poetry readings, tie-dyed patrons and pathways shaded by low, branch-woven canopies.

After the rookery, the lanes narrow and the drop-offs sharpen as the road approaches Big Sur. This is the Highway 1 of a million Instagram posts.

On the curves, the recent reopening of the highway is most obvious. There is very little traffic. For the entire stretch to Carmel, we hardly tailgate anyone, despite decades of memories of endless car chains that clogged the road where passing lanes were non-existent.

At a Hitchcockian pullout 60m above the ocean, a half-dozen students from Claremont McKenna College have parked to gape at the Big Creek Bridge, an art deco marvel opened in 1938.

With delicately curved trestles against the rough landscape, the bridge seems to have barely escaped disaster.

At its southern edge, a three-football-field-wide streak of scraped, rainbow-coloured debris rises against the cliffs all the way to the sea — The Regent’s Slide, which had held the road hostage for three years, is now largely cleaned out and tied down, Gulliver-like, by a thick skirt of mesh.

Excavators and bulldozers are still at work below the slide area when we drive through, and for the first time on this trip, we are forced to wait behind other vehicles as the road narrows to a single lane. Laser equipment is being affixed to the cliffs to measure any movement.

Further north, Nepenthe, Greek for “no sorrow”, is perched on a shelf above the surf. The restaurant has always been a mandatory stop.

The property had once been owned by Orson Welles and his wife Rita Hayworth; later the Fassett family built a broad orange terrace with a sculptural restaurant designed by Rowan Maiden, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Ever since, it has been a bohemian gathering spot for drum circles, dances and great meals.

Ordering a beet salad on the terrace, I ask the waiter if anything has altered during the three years the place has been mostly out of reach.

“Yeah,” she says, “we replaced some of the old chairs on the patio.”

Post Ranch Inn is another beacon of stability on an unstable road. Originally homesteaded by the Post family in the 1860s, the inn lies about 300m or so above the waves, across 39ha that are now dotted with tree houses, bungalows and sculptural glass-and-metal cabins.

Post Ranch even has a resident shaman. When storms closed the highway north of the property in 2024, guests were flown in by helicopter. Now they’re returning in droves and the place was booked solid for the next two weeks.

Although the typically $2900 to $4500 a night price tag is daunting, the inn’s restaurant, Sierra Mar, is more accessible and provides a glimpse beneath the centuries-old redwood trees into the compound that has been visited by the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal, Taylor Swift and George Clooney.

The restaurant’s kitchen was completely rebuilt during the road closure and the results are paying off. “The giant has awoken,” says Reylon Agustin, the inn’s culinary director, as he surveys the sunny terrace where visitors are tucking into smashburgers with ingredients grown in the inn’s garden.

Five kilometres up, on a steep road that descends from the highway, Paul Amend is directing traffic to Pfeiffer Beach, one of the most photographed shores in California.

“This might be the most difficult job on Highway 1,” he offers. Before the closure, travellers would drive 3km down the narrow road to five dozen parking spots in the beachside carpark — or simply park illegally, clogging driveways and creating bottlenecks. Now staff members have been stationed at the top of the road to force cars to wait for spots to open.

“Best to get here before 8am,” Amend states.

I come late in the day and am lucky enough to snag a spot. The cliff formations along the wide sand beach are riddled with holes and crannies, and a few — much fewer now that parking is enforced — souls brave the rips to take a dip. No lifeguards are on duty.

As the sun sets, I notice a man precariously leaning his iPhone onto one of the cliff’s handholds and then running over to his girlfriend to kneel and propose. It looks like an enthusiastic “yes”. In this setting, a “no” would be hard.

By the time Highway 1 reaches the bucolic village of Carmel-by-the-Sea, the landscape has softened. Cliffs ease into rolling hills and the ocean retreats behind grassy fields streaked yellow and purple with lupines and poppies in the fading light.

After three years, I am grateful to perform, in rare solitude, the ritual of one of America’s greatest road trips. But it’s impossible to take anything for granted on this wild coast, and that’s part of its allure.