California's Highway 1 winds along a spectacular coast

Just 10 miles south of San Francisco, the California coastal highway emerges from a landscape of subdivisions and suburban commercial strips to confront the Pacific Ocean in all its most imposing and treacherous grandeur.

The road — Highway 1, far north here of the famous Big Sur stretch better known to tourists — weaves through a dense eucalyptus grove, ascends a steep incline, passes through a jagged gap between two steep rock walls and emerges as a ribbon of cliff-top roadway known locally as Devil's Slide.

As the road heads out onto a blustery promontory jutting into the ocean and begins to descend, expanses of ocean — 500 feet below — come into view. The road veers impossibly close to the edge, meandering between a face of crumbling stone and a precipitous drop to the sea.

This stretch of Highway 1 lasts only about two miles and takes only five minutes, but it's a spectacular drive. It also defines a clear psychic border between the city and a section of coast so close it's almost a suburb, yet remarkably quiet and unspoiled.

Devil's Slide is also an experience to be sampled soon. In 2011, two tunnels being bored into the adjacent mountain will open to traffic, and this section of road will be closed to vehicles. San Mateo County does expect to keep it open to pedestrians and cyclists.

I began the drive with my children in San Francisco, near the landmark Cliff House that hangs over the ocean. The Cliff House is a familiar destination for a meal or a drink and souvenir shopping with a view of crashing surf.

Next to it is the Giant Camera, the last vestige of the Victorian seaside amusement park known as Playland.

Shaped like a 35-millimeter camera sitting on its back, lens pointing upward, the Giant Camera contains a large camera obscura, an optical device conceived more than 2,000 years ago.

Within the darkened building, a mirror and two lenses project the majestic shoreline view outside down onto a 6-foot-wide parabolic table. We saw, sharply defined against a velvety black interior, a cinematic bowl of living seascape, as the table's concave surface roiled with luminous waves, ocean spray, seagulls and seals.

This introduction behind us, we set out toward Devil's Slide.

Most drivers heading away from the Bay Area's sprawl use the freeways inland. But for commuters who use the coast road, the name Devil's Slide is irksomely eloquent, implying unpredictable natural wrath.

The erosion that formed the promontory has not stopped, and the road is plagued by rock slides, some of which have caused protracted closures.

Still, Devil's Slide is renowned locally for its stark beauty and treacherous mystique. It played a starring role in the 1960 thriller "Portrait in Black," in which Lana Turner and Anthony Quinn shove a car containing her dead husband over the edge.

From here down to Santa Cruz, the next sizable city, is only 60 miles, and the drive can easily be done in under two hours. But we took three meandering days, lingering in seaside towns and at state-park beaches.

These beach parks provide ample parking and well-maintained paths. Montara Beach, a well-sheltered and generally peaceful strip of pale gold sand, is the first beyond Devil's Slide, and we found it carpeted with delicate sand dollars. From November to April, gray whales pass by on their annual migrations.

In the late 19th century, shipwrecks caused by jagged offshore rocks propelled the construction of the Point Montara Lighthouse, which stands about a half mile south of the beach and is still operated by the Coast Guard. Hostel accommodations are available on the grounds.

On our second day, we stopped at the town of Princeton-by-the-Sea, where expansive tide pools displayed amber sea stars, pearlescent anemones and magenta urchins. Vocal seals, divebombing pelicans and scurrying snowy plovers animated the broad expanse.

In winter, crowds gather on the cliff tops above this spot to watch extreme surfers challenge waves up to 70 feet high.

Continuing south past the town of Half Moon Bay, known for its fall pumpkin harvest, we spotted ranches offering horseback riding and "U-pick" farms promising strawberries, cherries kiwis and more, depending on the season.

At the Pescadero Marsh Natural Reserve, where I was once a volunteer docent, great blue herons were swooping up into nests the size of tractor tires.

And at nearby Pescadero Beach, the incoming tide was gradually cutting off three sheltered coves from one another. We watched the sun setting beyond a chain of sea stacks that trail out into the water.

We stopped in tiny Pescadero for dinner at Duarte's Tavern, a fourth-generation family restaurant celebrated for its cream of artichoke soup and cioppino. Frank Duarte set a cask of whiskey on his new bar here 115 years ago, charging a dime a shot, and that bar is still in lively use.

The next morning, after a deep, salt-air sleep at the Davenport Roadhouse, named for a whaler whose landing here became a bustling loading zone during Prohibition, we set out for Ano Nuevo State Natural Reserve, where the huge, lumbering creatures known as elephant seals come to mate, birth, nurse, molt and rest.

Tours fill up quickly in the midwinter mating season, when full-grown males — typically about 15 feet long and weighing up to 2 1/2 tons — engage in fierce, chest-bumping battles to secure leadership over harems of females.

Like rubbery minivans engaged in primal combat, they rear up and lunge into each other with sumo-gladiator defiance.

Pelicans briefly escorted us at eye level as we drove to Natural Bridges State Beach, with its massive rock formations.

A mile beyond that, sunlight pierced through the cloud cover, and our last destination, the 102-year-old Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, came into view. It rose up against a vivid blue sky, its multicolored towers, gondolas, Ferris wheel and tilted rides anchored by the complex, curling armature of an old wooden roller coaster, the Giant Dipper.

We climbed on for the ride. The sounds of wind and seabirds had given way to clattering tracks and exhilarated shrieks. But at the coaster's highest points, we were treated to vertiginous views of the ocean we'd just spent three days savoring.