Pacific Coast Highway - The Most Scenic Drives in America: 120 Spectacular Road Trips - page 153

ize 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 Monu-
ment.
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—areawesomebyanymeasure,soaring250feetabovethefernyforestfloor.Theold-
est 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.”
3. Point Reyes National Seashore
Back on the Panoramic Highway, follow the steep, tortuous road through Mt. Tamalpais
StatePark.AtStinsonBeachtheroadregainstheshorelineandthereparallelsthenotorious
San Andreas Fault, following it north up Olema Valley and Tomales Bay. Extending some
650 miles from the Mexican border to Cape Mendocino, the fault marks the junction of the
Pacific and North American crustal plates. As these huge landmasses grind past each other
ataspeedoftwoinchesperyear,pressurebuildsupandisthensuddenlyreleasedwhenthe
plates jump. A well-marked trail offers a firsthand glimpse of some of the damage caused
by one such memorable jolt, the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
Just north of Olema, a turnoff leads to 70,000-acre Point Reyes National Seashore,
which extends some 70 miles around the Point Reyes Peninsula, a craggy triangle that
juts out into the Pacific. Eons ago this orphaned hunk of southern California granite was
dragged about 350 miles northward by the San Andreas Fault. Along the beach, moun-
tain and seaside habitats meet and mingle, producing a potpourri of dunes and estuaries,
hills and forests, marshes and pastures. Wildlife far outnumbers people here. Bobcats, elk,
mountain lions, and several endemic and exotic introduced species of deer roam freely
within the park's borders, while offshore a lucky visitor may spot the cruising bulk of a
gray whale, an orca, or the occasional fin of a great white shark.