Categories

Ventura to Shell Beach

By Daniel Leventhal | Published February 6, 2019

This is it. The third and final post in the series on the Southern California coast. Last time we got as far as Point Mugu in the southwestern corner of Ventura County. Today we’ll start out in Ventura (after a brief stop for some fish tacos in Oxnard on the way), work our way through Santa Barbara County and finally make it as far as Shell Beach just north of Pismo Beach in San Luis Obispo County.  

This will be mostly coast. In some places there’s no other choice but to head inland where the road north leaves the coast, such as the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) from Point Mugu to Oxnard in Ventura County, and 101 and 1 at Gaviota State Park below Lompoc where the PCH becomes the Cabrillo Highway. From there the road pretty much stays just inland all the way to Oceano and Pismo Beach.  

We will deliberately stay inland after Santa Barbara and take California SR 154 (a/k/a the Chumash Highway and San Marcos Pass Road) through Los Padres National Forest to a few inland destinations, including the Santa Barbara Wine Country, before cutting back over to the coastal road at Lompoc.  

Along the way on this drive our main stops will be Ventura, Santa Barbara, Pismo Beach and Shell Beach. We’ll also go see the incredible sand dunes at Pismo Beach.  Santa Barbara is a gem and one of my favorite places to visit in California. They are making some very good wine nearby!  

Our journey northward roughly tracks the route of El Camino Real (the King’s Highway) dating back to the colonial period when California was still known as Alta California and part of New Spain.

Franciscan Catholic missionaries from Spain founded a chain northward of mission churches along El Camino Real, and we will see in this set several of the surviving missions. The mission buildings themselves are the oldest extant structures in California and important historic monuments. They are quite beautiful. Here’s a complete list with locations.

This set is in the Southern California part of what we call the Central Coast (see map to the left). One could continue northward and see some more amazing scenery, including some lovely beaches such as those at Morro Bay and San Simeon, visit Hearst Castle and then do the spectacular (if a bit harrowing) drive along Highway 1 to Big Sur and then Carmel, Monterey and Santa Cruz.  After a closure of almost two years due to land slides Highway 1 has reopened! Read more here. There are two more northern counties along the Central Coast – Monterey County and Santa Cruz County. The plan in the blog, however, is to stay south and cut over from Pismo Beach via San Luis Obispo to get to the San Joaquin Valley – where the Joads wound up once they made it to California on Route 66 in the Grapes of Wrath.

So next post we are going to be leaving the coast and heading eastward. We’ll make our way to Highway 99 and the heartland to drive northward as far as the Lincoln Highway in the Delta and see along the way a very different part of the state. The California agricultural heartland away from the coastal bubbles.

Here is the set. Click on (or tap) an image to expand it (and use the arrow to the right on an expanded image to go through the set, if preferred over scrolling down in the post).

Catch you on the next wave.