Big Sir!

TO THE HIPPIE HIDEAWAY, PASS THROUGH THE US ARMY FIRST

Yep. That’s right. To get to Big Sur – the mother of all Hippie hideaways – you do need to pass through a US army base – Fort Hunter Liggett, to be exact. The big sign at the entrance says that by passing through the gate you agree to a vehicle search (and a body search) at any time and without a warrant. Scary stuff. Still, if you do brave it through, you’d find one of America’s most un-American roads, and a view so striking you’d forget the military warnings.

California Dreaming

Fabled writer Henry Miller said: “Big Sur is the California that men dreamed of years ago.”

You gotta hand it to him. The guy was right.

Big Sur is the most rugged section of California’s famous Pacific Coast Highway, colloquially known as “Route 1”.Hugging the Pacific coast, the 150Km stretch of road between San Simion and Carmel is the longest, and the most scenic stretch of undeveloped coastline in the US (sans Alaska).

This fact has played a significant role in making Big Sur a magnet for counterculture notable such as beat-generation prophet, Jack Kerouac, Gonzo Journalist Hunter S. Thompson and Miller – to name but a few.

Some go as far as calling Big Sur “one of the most beautiful coastlines anywhere in the world”. I think they’re exaggerating a bit, and yet “Most beautiful road in the contiguous United State” is still good enough.

Getting there, however, is not that easy as it used to be.

The coast is toast

Or rather drenched, as it would have it. In 2017 after years of drought, Big Sur was literally washed away by a major downpour. Just north of San Simion, a massive landslide dumped more than one million tons of rocks and dirt on the road. When the dust cleared, more than 500 meters of the Pacific Coast Highway was berried underneath 12 meters of debris.
A year later, they are still working to clear it. As of May ’18, The road is still closed.

So how do you get to Big Sur?

Well, not from the Pacific Coast Highway you don’t. You have to take a detour into the never-lands. Which, is exactly what I did.

Getting there

Finding your way out of route 1 is easy. Just turn right to road 46 just before Cambria (it’s hard to avoid those big “Road closed ahead” signs). Once you turned right, continue with the achingly beautiful snaking road up the ridge. It’s hard to stay focused as your neck struggles to keep up with your gaze. Should I look at the view or the road?

Assuming you haven’t crashed en-route, you should eventually reach highway 101, turn right, and head north. So far for the easy part.

Now for the trickier bit, finding your way back to route one.

Get lost (and enjoy every bit of it).

To start with, no GPS will show you the way back. The roads are just too provincial for any self-respecting GPS to consider. This is, after all, the land of the brave, not the home of the feeble. Lucky for me a nice lady in the Morrow Bay Tourist Office (a place worth its own post), let me in on a little local secret that has made all the difference.

“Search Jolon,” she said, which later turned out to be not an easy thing to find. Jolon, apparently, is not a name of a village. Jolon is a name of junction outside of Fort Hunter US Army base, somewhere off to the west of highway 101, and off the charts of both my Ford Mustang’s GPS AND Google Maps. I finally managed to find my way there only to discover the road blocked with a big army gate and not a guard in sight. Being raised in Israel, I assumed this place was off limits and was about to turn back as a touring motorcycle passed over me and went straight through the gate like it wasn’t there.

I soon followed. Glad I did.

While the army base was quintessentially American, the road snaking through it was anything but. If you were keeping pace with my posts, you’d know I’ve ridden many twisted roads in my life, from the Black Forest in Germany, to the Austrian Alps, to the tracks of the UK, and throughout all of my home country. Yet, nothing had prepared me to the endless series of twists and turns, to the sheer camber of the tarmac, the steep ascent to the crest – 1000 meters above the Pacific Ocean, and the almost complete lack of traffic. My kind of road!

Wish I had a proper Bimmer and sot a soft-top Eco-Boost Mustang.
Oh-well, you just can’t have everything, can’t you.

Forget Big Sur

As I cleared the top of the ridge, one of the most spectacular vistas revealed itself smack in the middle of my windshield. Wow. All I could see were steep green mountains rolling down to the torrid blue Pacific. In front of me was a deep ravine cutting its way from the ridge all the way down. The battle between driving and viewing was over. I had to stop. I had to stop many times.

When I got to the bottom of the cliff I turned right and was back on Route 1, driving to the tiny hamlet of Big Sur and the town of Carmel beyond it. The road, of course, was spectacular. One of those classic “Must Do”s. Big Sur on the other hand, isn’t. Just a gas station with some cheesy gift shops and an overpriced restaurant. Unlike the whole region, the place Big Sur was a letdown. As I drove my wobbly Mustang north to Carmel, I kept on wondering what was it that made all this beautiful region named after a rather unimpressive stop.

I’m still wondering.
If you know why, would you be kind enough to let me know?