We Can't Take That Stuff to Canada: USA - Santa Barbara to Santa Cruz on the Pacific Highway

Our next stop was for two nights in an Airbnb in Goleta, which is a small city just to the west of Santa Barbara. The place we stayed was only a 10 minute walk across some parkland to the beach. Apparently there had been some high winds over the previous weeks so there was lots of drift wood on the beach. After a bit off a walk around we went out for burgers at a place called Habit Burger near the university. The area around the uni was very busy with students out eating and drinking and every other person seemed to be on or carrying a skateboard.

Beach at Goleta

Giant sea snail type thing

The next day we drove into downtown Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara is a pretty well off town with lots of designer shops and posh restaurants. Most of the buildings are built in the Mediterranean style after an earthquake in the 1920s destroyed the earlier settlement.

Santa Barbara courthouse

Santa Barbara Mission

Looking back at Santa Barbara from the jetty

We set off early the next morning to head north up Route 1 which hugs the coastline through Big Sur all the way up to San Fransico. The views on the drive were spectacular and we were lucky we had good weather as it can often be foggy along this stretch. We stopped at a beach to look at the elephant seal opus that were resting there, most of the adults had already left to go out to sea.

Elephant seal pups

We arrived at our campsite at Lime Kiln state park in the afternoon and got a site down near the beach. We then did a few of the trails which lead up into the redwood forests to the old lime kilns and a waterfall.

Lime kilns

Waterfall

Afterwards, we headed back to the beach with a bottle of wine to watch the sunset.

Another early start the next day as there were a few places we wanted to stop on the way to Santa Cruz. Our first stop was at Julia Pfieffer Burns state park where we did a little walk down to a waterfall (we seem to have visited a lot of waterfalls over the last few months) and the ruins of an old house built on the cliffs.

Waterfall

View from the terrace of the old house

Next stop was Pfieffer beach which has purple sand and some cool rocks.

Purple sand

Cool rocks

Andrew Molera state park was next. We walked down to the beach through a meadow area and saw some deer.

Deer

Beach

We stopped a few more times on route to get some pictures of the scenery and landmarks, like Bixby bridge which was built in the 1930s.

Bixby bridge

After a quick stop at Carmel for lunch, where it appeared half of California had decided to spend their afternoon, we headed on towards Santa Cruz.

Beach at Carmel

Santa Cruz is a bit different to how I imagined. The seafront is like Blackpool with better weather and a nicer beach. As it was Saturday evening when we arrived the boardwalk was heaving and everyone was enjoying the sunshine and rides.