53.4 miles today, 4,582.6 miles total

We started in Marina Dunes RV Park 10 miles north of Montery. We parked at San Carlos Beach & walked around town having lunch on a terrace overlooking the bay at Louie Linguini’s. We drove past Pebble Beach and through Carmel-By-The-Sea. We then continued on the scenic 17 mile drive along Hwy 1 Pacific Coast Hwy to Big Sur. Highway 1 was constructed through geologically diverse landscape in the 1930′s and opened in 1937. Parts of the Highway north of Big Sur follow the Old Coast Road, completed from Monterey to Big Sur by Monterey County in the 1880′s. Construction of the highway involved extensive excavations that utilized steam shovels and blasting.  We had an incredible dinner with magnificent vista views at Nepenthe Restaurant at Big Sur on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It is 808 feet above sea level. Then we took Thumper back to Fernwood RV Park at Big Sur, m, b, w & t

“Big Sur is the California that men dreamed of years ago, this is the Pacific that Balboa looked at from the Peak of Darien, this is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look.” –Henry Miller (American Author/Writer, 1891-1980)

Nepenthe is a word derived from the Greek, meaning “no sorrow.” A mythical Egyptian drug, the wife of Thonis, King of Egypt, gave it to Helen, daughter of Jove, to induce forgetfulness and surcease from sorrow. The word and thought have been used in literature through all time. Homer mentioned it in “The Odyssey,” & in “The Raven,” Edgar Allen Poe said: ” Quaff oh quaff this kind Nepenthe, and forget the lost Lenore.”