Today (Aug 19), we left San Francisco to once again hit the Pacific Coast Highway, getting us one day closer to Los Angeles. While the distance between SF and LA wasn’t much, all GPS forecasts of travel time for our route indicated long travel times, In addition, we had a stop planned, a stop where we expected to burn up a lot of time.
We started the day at Home Plate, a restaurant a block from our hotel. They make breakfast with real crab so what’s not to love, right? I had Eggs Benedict with crab cakes. Yes, crab cakes between the eggs and English muffin.
From there, we headed to the hotel to empty our room and checkout. While it was a simple hotel room, it was probably the most space efficient and functional room we had had yet. Other hotels in high cost jurisdictions should take cues from this room’s design.
Pretty compact, but we never felt cramped and we had space to store/manage our gear. 
Yup, all this fit in the room 
How much space do you really need to poop? 
Umm… this thing was really cool. We think we want one.
Outside the room, it was also pretty novel. The hallways are all exterior space, open to the environment. We’re told the building has always been like this and that the owners kept it like this despite the recent refit. It actually took us a while to notice as the first day, temperatures were pretty comparable indoors and out, but the tip off was the slope in the floors–they all sloped to floor drains in the halls! It was really neat and worked well in SF’s climate, while also making space for climbing plants on the walls.
Green Wall in the making 
This hall is exposed to the exterior winds and rains. 
Another angle on the open halls 
Open to the outside at all levels 
Plants growing in courtyard
Finally, we were on the road, driving through some pretty swank looking SF neighbourhoods. We shuddered at the thought of what they might be worth and eventually hit this road that overlooked a beach on the Pacific, not the sheltered SF Bay.
We looked down to the beach below and saw some people who had just completed a design in the sand. We shouted our approval and we got friendly waves in return!
We then took a stroll around the back of the Cliff House restaurant and watched the Pacific lash the cliff before hitting the road again.
Driving the PCH provides ample opportunities to stop and explore the shoreline. This one spot caught our attention by virtue of this small rock covered in birds, so we stopped and discovered all of this amazing erosion.
Rock covered in birds 
Mandatory blurry water shot
While exploring the coastline, we met a nice couple who had visited Ottawa so they fully appreciated how far from home we were!
Hitting the road again, we encountered this tunnel.
It wasn’t our first tunnel.
Have no fear, speed limits were considered.
Exiting the tunnel, we encountered some weirdness…
Yes, that’s a building on rock and both of them are eroding away. We didn’t get out of the car for this. Rather, we pulled up behind this car.
Our next stop was a place I had seen on TV countless times and would love to visit again, with a certain red Miata: Laguna Seca! We followed directions religiously, but it seemed all might be lost.
We even took this photo to Instagram our disappointment!
In taking the photos, we noticed this: barbed wire backed-up by razor wire. Seriously?
We weren’t going to give up though. We asked a local, who pointed us in the right direction (to the front gate) and we got there!
We paid our $5 gate fee and headed for the paddock where we were told to expect a Singer lapping group. Yes, that Singer! If you’re not a car person, or if you think that your small (or large) SUV’s high driving position is great, rest assured that we aren’t talking about sewing machines. We’re talking about Singer Vehicle Design.
There were also some newer Porsche models in attendance, but the vintage models dominated attendance.
While these big money rides were hugely impressive, the stars of the show were surely the McLaren Sennas.
It appears to be for sale.
If you were paying attention, you might have noted that there was a lot of plural in the preceding paragraphs: stars, were, Sennas. The plurals are required because there were three Sennas in attendance. Yes, three.
Again, for those who might not know, only 500 of these cars exist. The last one sold new for about $2.7M USD and, in January, a low mileage “used” example, went for $1.47M at auction. Yes, three of them in one place.
The icing on the cake was overhearing the conversations between some of the participants. It became apparent that a few of them didn’t live in the area and that they had had their cars transported there for the track day. It was also clear that at least one of them involved overseas travel.
The best was the owner of one of Sennas remarking to his friend that his friend’s two Singer Porsches were more precious than this Senna. That’s right his friend’s two Singers.
Public Service Announcement: If you’re ever feeling like you’ve done well for yourself, visit a Singer track day in SoCal to be quickly reminded of where you fit into the world’s pecking order.
Having absorbed that rush of inadequacy, we hiked up to the Corkscrew to take some photos of cars before also grabbing a few more at Turns 10 and 6.
We also compiled some video for those who like car sounds, check this out.
For our track friends, the silver and dark grey vintage 911s were pushing hardest. The more modern Porsches and the Ford GT were pretty conservative. The Sennas weren’t going very hard. One tried to brake late into the corkscrew and scared himself. All observations confirmed that cars with larger performance envelopes have less of that envelope used when driven by mortals.
Before we left the track, we figured we should let you know how pretty the views are from this place.
Leaving the track, we hit the PCH and made some road trip friends on the way. The first was woman and her kids, all from New York State. She took this photo of us at one of the many vistas.
The second was the driver of this lovely Alpina B7, a modified BMW 7-Series. We were both trapped behind this minivan that was refusing to pull over and let us by. When that driver drifted out of his/her lane enough and decided it was time to slow down and yield, we tried to pull a gap on the B7.
We couldn’t, even through the tight sections of the road, he/she was right on our bumper, so we let him/her overtake. We then started following the B7, scything through traffic, passing groups of cars at every opportunity. It was good fun. 290hp and nearly as much torque is wonderful. More would be better.
We ended our day in San Simeon, CA at the Silver Surf Motel. Tomorrow, we enter Los Angeles!