The couple figured that Caltrans, the California state transportation authority, was likely to close the road. Mary Lu, who was driving, steered carefully past the crumbled edge of the highway, staying in the northbound lane, so that her husband would make his flight. They were on a stretch of coast with no cell service, on the sole road that gives access to their region.
a handwritten sign on neon-orange poster board threatened. The scene reminded me of Malibu, that other famous stretch of Highway 1, where the hoi polloi must study the intricacies of public-access points hidden between multimillion-dollar homes in order to go to a beach that state law insists is public. Houses here sell for millions of dollars. I looked at the local rental listings on Zillow. The cheapest place was more than twelve thousand dollars a month.