When I lived in California, I would take occasional drives up and down the Pacific coast in my old green Subaru.  Those trips were sublime.  When I went zipping along the tarmac in those grad-school days, I felt free and untouchable.  All was right with the world.  The road seemed to stretch on forever into the distance; I could drive as far as I pleased, and the scenery never became unpleasant or boring.

A red convertible drives along the Pacific coast near Big Sur, California

I experienced only a portion of the coastal highway back then, from roughly Stinson Beach in the north to Big Sur in the south.  Those 200 miles were beautiful enough to inspire me to drive the entire coast on this trip: 2000 miles from Seattle to San Diego.

Sure, you could get between those two cities considerably faster by using I-5.  Going that way would shave almost 800 miles off the trip.  You might even be able to make it in a single (very long) day.  However, if you did that, you wouldn’t see the ocean much, and you’d blow past all manner of interesting towns and parks.

I stretched my coastal journey out to 11 days, excluding the segue to South Dakota.  There were a couple of rest days in there for Portland and San Francisco, but for the most part I was driving each day.  Some days I averaged over 50 mph, but on others I struggled to average 35 mph.  Such were the roads.

What did I see?  Beauty, quite simply.

Heceta Head Lighthouse

How can I do justice to the experience?  Sure, I could write about dodging logging trucks on the Olympic Peninsula, camping by the beach in southern Washington, and walking through the tall redwoods in California.  I could mention my amazement at finding huge sand dunes in Oregon, or my shock upon entering the Tillamook Cheese factory and seeing more tourist ice cream consumption than at a fair.  Would that then mean leaving out my enjoyment of the ferry ride with Sam across Puget Sound?  Or perhaps my giddy excitement at staying at my favorite lighthouse, Pigeon Point?

The reality is that I can’t put it to words.  Not here, not now, not yet.  Perhaps with time I’ll be able to distill the experience into something manageable, but were I to try now I would simply ramble on.  The whole stretch of road is still too new in my memory, and the pieces are all so precious that I do not yet have the will to discard any of them.

Coronado Beach

I drive the road over and over again in my mind. There, I do what I one day hope to accomplish on paper.  I filter out the noise, and I see the common thread that ties together everything else.  It’s the constant presence of the Pacific.  I hear the beating of its surf, smell the odor of its fish, taste the hint of its salt.  I feel it.  I begin to understand why the ocean has held such an allure for so many throughout history.

Will I go back to the coast? Perhaps, though doing so holds as much risk of corrupting my memories as it does potential for improving them. I got away with expanding my small preview into the entire coast, and for that I feel fortunate.  I have such a fond recollection of the complete drive that I fear the certain flaws that revisiting it will reveal.  I don’t want that loss, at least not yet.