US 1 - Morro Bay to Santa Cruz

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As they say here, we 'lucked out'. Pacific storms have been bringing in some much needed rain. Not needed by us, but certainly needed by the natives.
Luckily the rain kept away for our drive up to Santa Cruz. US1 is prone to rockslides, mudslides and all sorts of mishaps, many of them closing sections of it. If it gets closed you can find yourself with a looong detour involving much retracing of steps. The only place where we hit heavy rainfall was Big Sur. That was a shame 'cos I intended to take a bit of a break there and wander round. It was much too wet for that.
Got to Santa Cruz mid-afternoon, cold and windy, just in time to catch the weather forecast. Cold, wet and winds of 100 mph predicted in the mountains. Still, it could be worse, we could be experiencing the same conditions somewhere other than Santa Cruz.

US1 is a great drive. Enjoy the pics.

Morro Bay was so sweet, whilst there we drove down to see the elephant seals at Piedra Blancas. As we arrived at the beach we saw a couple then as we looked along the beach we realised the entire beach was covered, at first glance it had looked like a very rocky beach. They were very vocal, the males sounded off to other males. The females seemed to be arguing over the pups, and others just lying round taking in the sun. They are protected by federal law, but totally left to their own devices, so fab seeing yet another species in their natural environment.

Love being driven on US1, it's such a fantastic drive as music monitor went all chilled with Miles Davis. We were very lucky with the weather, although would have been nice to stop and have a walk. Santa Cruz is wet, wet wet!

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