Big Sur, it is called, and it is the very model of the rocks and sea fighting over territory. The highway through the area wasn't opened until 1937. Men died cutting the road from the mountains. It corkscrews in and out of coves and headlands, up and down, with precipices to one side and breakers to the other. Writer Henry Miller lived in the area in a little shack on Anderson Creek for years.
Coffee shops replace redwoods and couture replaces granite.
Just outside of town, there is Point Lobos State Reserve, a jutting peninsula filled with sea-weathered rock and Monterey cypress. And in the town of Monterey, the aquarium is a perennial favorite. But the landscape seems hopelessly mercantile after the sublimity of Sur. Monterey Bay is one vast, flat, muddy estuary given over to the growing of garlic and artichokes. North of Santa Cruz, nature reasserts herself, though less majestically.