Rendezvous with Highway 1

If you live in the bay area, it's a given that most of your outings are going to be water-related, and concerning the pacific, and along highway 1. Extending from Legget in the North to San Juan Capistrano in the south, this 548.59 mile long stretch is a breathtaking composition of the best part of the pacific coastline along California.
A drive through the perennially foggy Big Sur alone suffices the reputation of Route 1.
My first brush with Hway 1 was sometime last summer, when (only) one of us had a driving permit, so we took a rental car and drove all the way upto Santa Cruz. Actually this first experience was more of disillusionment and frustration - Santa Cruz is/was a particularly smelly beach, add to it the dogs-allowed policy, and dog-fearing people, hmmm, not something I'd care to remember beyond now :)).
The second tryst was much more enjoyable - the seventeen mile drive - A really scenic stretch of Seventeen miles, dotted with millionaire homes, 'splurgy' golf courses, and cypress trees shaped more by the passage of wind than any thing else :). At the right view point (Seal Rock) , you'll get a really good view of Sea Lions, and you can't help but envy their all-you-can-eat-then-sleep lifestyle as you watch them sluggishly move forth, contemplate the issue of world peace, then take a 3 hr nap, and then finally make the intended plunge into the icy cold waters of the pacific.
A little further down is the famous 'lone cypress ' (or did I get the name wrong??). A protective enclave manages to keep the roots from getting mangled with the sea weeds, but other than that, it stands alone (and not tall :( ) jutting just a little into the sea.
'D' came over for an interview to the area, and apart from the interview 'preparation' (believe me, I didn't keep her from studying!! Ask her!!) she had about 14 hrs, 5 pm - 7 am the next morning. So D, Rahul n I went to SF - I made her walk almost 1+ miles to show her Fisherman's wharf :), and all she could say later was that the walk had done her good, and that this was the only way she'd have been able to really see the skyline :).
When we got back to campus at about 1:30 am plus a triple chocolate something cake (anyways, it has chocolate, and Divya can't see anything except chocolate, and chocolate cakes in grocery stores) ; Ravi got the crazy idea to go to half-moon bay and then have cake. What was initially half moon bay then became midway to Santa Cruz, and we ended up having cake somewhere near the point-something lighthouse, and sometime near 4:30 am. But truly, that was one of the best cake locations I've ever had :D.
Graduation time : My parents came over for graduation, and my Mom is a confirmed water-lover. All I had to do to keep her happy and smiling was to drive down to any water body, and lead them to the water-front :))). En Route to LA, we made a stop-over at Big Sur: well - just at Pfeiffer State beach, a scenic out-of-the-way beach. It's got all these 'cavey' rocks, which have these hollows through which water gushes through, and makes a very miniature version of the movie scenes where the heroine learns that she is going to have a kid, and that the villain has (apparently) killed the hero, and all the waves in the world race madly towards the biggest rocks in the world and ... well, you got the point.
The next rendezvous with Pfeiffer State Beach had much more interesting consequences, it was windy as ever, and sand poured in, and my photographic equipment unintentionally became exposed to the vagaries of nature, and what was left out of it was my warranty covered camera, and a couple of kindergarten kids :).
San Simeon is yet another picturesque place along the coast, 'tis the location of the largest known congregation for elephant seals, and the best part is you get to watch them from really close quarters, and then you notice that June (or probably the entire solar cycle) is a time when the seals shed their old scales, which look very similar to the bark of trees, and that seals and sea lions are different (one of them has ears and one of them hasn't; I forget which is which though), and that they're actually a lil more active that sea lions, but we're probably talking in terms of single digit percentages here ;-).
Go even further south, and there's Solvang and Santa Barbara, more 'man-made' that the above places, and equally famous too, but that is another weekend :)