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The Pacific Coast Highway

Three days, a hot new Corvette, a brand new Nikon D70, and a beautiful woman for company....sometimes life just doesn't get any better.  Check out these photographs from a run up the California coast in a 2004 Z-06 Vette, along the Pacific Coast Highway, with a bunch of great stops along the way.

Our Pacific Coast Highway road burner...a hot new Z-06 Corvette, as seen through a 17-35 Sigma lens and a D70 Nikon.  What a great ride!  We left on a Tuesday morning with no particular plan other than to run north on the PCH.  We headed west on the 210 Freeway until it ended at Interstate 5, continued north until we intersected California 58, and headed west...

Highway 58 is one of California's great roads.  It runs east and west across the state, through low-lying hills and great plains.  The scenery and the road are both awesome.

We weren't the only ones enjoying the twisties on California 58.  We traded places with these bikers several times as we made our way across the state.

A lone structure, gradually surrounding to time and the elements.

We hit Morro Bay shortly after 58 ran into the Pacific Coast Highway, where we stopped for lunch.  The fish tacos were great.  Not as good as they are in Baja, Mexico, but still pretty good.

That's Sue with the rock that dominates Morro Bay in the background.  The fishing boat behind Sue is named "Slick Chick."  That's two in the same frame...

Taking a photo break along PCH, one of the most beautiful roads in the world.  I was amazed at how many other photographers I saw doing the same thing.

This road is great....

The Vette is a wonderful car.  It performs as well as cars costing three times as much, yet it is actually fairly economical.  This little 405-horsepower road burner averaged 24.4 miles per gallon for the entire 1100-mile trip!

Some of the bugs were probably not as impressed by the Corvette as we were. 

This shot reminds me of the old joke:  When a bug hits your car at 80 mph, what's the last thing that goes through its mind?

(Answer:  Its butt...)

Deja vu is a relatively common experience for people who drive the PCH for the first time. That's because even if you've never driven it, you've probably seen it in a hundred movies.

The Bixby Bridge, built in 1932.

And another.  A very cool lighthouse.

I had to do the same, while Sue held the wheel.

Looking north on PCH.

The Vette has a heads up display, just like a fighter jet.  You can just make it out in this photograph (look over the hood...).  

We drove up to Monterey Bay the first night of our trip.  Up to this point, I had been alomst exclusively using the 17-35 Sigma on the D70.  We walked out onto the Monterey Pier that night and I needed something a bit faster, so these shots are through the Nikon 50mm 1.4D lens.  It worked pretty well in these low light conditions.  One of the nice things about digital photography, of course, is that you know right away if you got the shot.

I used the flash in this mode, and it worked pretty well, too.

The city had paintings of bicyclists every few feet along the path (probably to keep pedestrians like us off the path). 

Most of the helmeted figures had embellishments like you see here.

A monument on the beach.

There was a large freshwater pond in front of our hotel, and it was full of these Canadian honkers.  I tried an older Sigma 70-300 for this shot.  It's not too bad, but it was not as good as some of my other lenses. 

You can see the difference in lens quality easier with a digital camera due the instant "enlargements" you see when viewing the photo in the "actual size" mode.  Differences in lens quality that are not apparent in 4x6 film prints just jump out when viewing a 3008x2000 pixel photograph actual size.

Wow, what a shot! 

Sue grabbed this while we rode across the Golden Gate Bridge. We didn't use a polarizer on the Sigma 17-35 lens...that blue at the top is the Vette's windshield tint.

The fog is real, though.  The clouds were blowing across the bay at a pretty good clip while we were there.

Sausalito is a tourist town.  There are other industries there, too, but the place is a major tourist trap.

Here's the inside of a jewelry store.

More boats.  Everyone in California must be rich.

Figures for sale in one of the tourist trap stores.  These were about 50% actual size.  I guess somebody buys this stuff...

A sign describing the cemetery.  It was closed to the public.

Inside the overhang in front of the mission.  Nearly every California mission we've visited has this kind of overhang.

Sue in front of a sign marking the El Camino Real, which is the original path followed by the California missions.

The San Andreas Fault is directly behind Sue.

This was an interesting shot...nothing special, just pretty.

A theater on Monterey Street in SLO.

Here's the Mission San Luis Obispo.

This is the same kind of architectural feature identified on the Mission San Juan Bautista page.

The Free Library in downtown San Luis Obispo.

Hearst Castle was the next stop on this tour.

An entranceway to one of the four guest houses at the Hearst Castle.

Here's another photograph of the outdoor pool.  I used the 17-35 Sigma for all of these shots.  That lens is a good match to the D-70.

Sue in front of some matching flowers.

A sarcophogus.

Hearst collected antiquities; this is not a reproduction.

An interior shot at ISO 1600.

An interesting carpet, which the guide told us had recently been cleaned.  Here the colors are actually more vibrant than I remember. 

The indoor pool.

This was a tricky shot.  I ended up shooting about 2 stops over what the meter recommended.  You have to look a this one for a minute to get oriented.   Look at the people on the left to get a feel for what's going on in this photo.

Here's an interior shot of the Mission Santa Ines.

And finally, a parting shot of Sue photographing me.

Check out our published work below.  Click on the pictures to learn more about each book...