Pacific Coast Highway

From the roller-coaster hills of San Francisco to the dazzling seascapes of the North Coast, this California highway is paved with scenic riches.

Points 1-2

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Majestic cliffs rising over an endless, churning sea; workaday fishing towns set in tidy coves; ancient forests nourished by moist ocean air; and ridged hills that parade toward the shimmering blue waters of the Pacific -- these are but a few of the sights to be savored along California's North Coast. No wonder residents, who are never far from nature's bounties, consider this coastal strip one of the state's most prized possessions and regard its main thoroughfare -- Rte. 1, known simply as the One -- as a highway to heaven.

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1. Marin Headlands
It would be hard to imagine San Francisco Bay without this heroic, ruddy marvel. North across the bridge, the Marin Headlands -- part of the vast Golden Gate National Recreation Area -- offer exhilarating city and ocean views. From here, north of the Golden Gate, the city is framed by the bridge's twin towers. Beyond, urban bustle gives way to natural splendor: the rounded hills, gray-sand beaches, and soaring seaside cliffs that characterize the North Coast. (Traffic lights will be few and far between for the next 150 miles, but the road's many curves do a splendid job of governing the traffic flow.) A few miles north of San Francisco, take the Panoramic Highway west toward Muir Woods National Monument.

2. Muir Woods National Monument
They are nature's tallest trees, a living link to the age of dinosaurs. They are the redwoods of coastal California, and while specimens here are dwarfed by their siblings to the north, the redwoods of Muir's Cathedral Grove -- the last such remaining stand in the Bay Area -- are awesome by any measure, soaring 250 feet above the ferny forest floor. The oldest among them, at 1,000 years, was a mere sapling when Vikings first set foot in the New World. Six miles of trails guide visitors along the banks of Redwood Creek and into the heart of the grove, which the naturalist John Muir, exaggerating only slightly, called "the best tree-lover's monument in all the forests of the world."

• • Road Trips

• Yosemite and Beyond
• Bejeweled with cliffs, domes, meadows, lakes, and waterfalls -- the legacy of bygone glaciers -- Yosemite National Park offers visitors a degree of beauty and variety that is truly mesmerizing.
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• Redwood Highway
• This one-of-a-kind highway unfurls amid the wonders of California's northern coast.
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• Nevada 93
• In a land of bewitching beauty, a mix of crinkled mountains and parched valleys contrasts with chilly caverns and a mammoth man-made lake.
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• Magnificent Mt. Rainier
• This gleaming colossus in the heart of Washington presides over miles of deep snowfields, flower-filled meadows, pristine streams, and lush evergreen forest.
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• Mt. Shasta-Cascade Loop
• This drive visits sky-shearing volcanoes, flourishing forests and wetlands that teem with life, and even otherworldly underground chambers.
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• More Great Road Trips!
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