From the San Francisco city limits, Hwy-1 runs along the Pacific Ocean through the rural and almost totally undeveloped coastline of San Mateo County. The first eight miles or so are high-speed freeway, but after passing through the suburban communities of Daly City and Pacifica, the pace abruptly slows to a scenic cruise. Pacifica, which has a long pier, a popular surfing beach, a bowling alley, an oceanview Taco Bell, and a handy Holiday Inn Express motel, makes a good edge-of-town base for seeing the San Francisco area; south of here, two-lane Hwy-1 hugs the decomposing cliff tops for the next few miles before reaching Montara, where the old but still functioning lighthouse has been partly converted into the HI Point Montara Hostel (650/728-7177).
South of Montara, Hwy-1 bends inland around the rugged shores of the James Fitzgerald Marine Preserve (650/728-3584), a wonderful (but very fragile) tidepool area filled with anemones and other delicate sea creatures; look, but don’t touch!
The first sizeable coastal town south of San Francisco, Half Moon Bay is 25 miles from the city but seems much more distant. A quiet farming community that’s slowly but surely changing into a Silicon Valley suburb, Half Moon Bay still has an all-American Main Street a block east of the Hwy-1 bypass, lined by hardware stores, cafés, bakeries, and the inevitable art galleries and B&Bs. The main event here is the annual Pumpkin Festival, held mid-October, which celebrates the coming of Halloween with a competition to determine the world’s largest pumpkin—winning gourds weigh as much as a half ton!
