I had twice before driven Hwy 1 and 101 between San Francisco and Seattle (about 40 years ago solo on a motorcycle and again about 10 years ago with Owen and Max in a Honda Accord station wagon) but had not had time to do much exploring. This time I planned to rectify that. Still, I only had a week because I wanted to be in SF by Friday evening since Owen would have the weekend off work (and was going to fly back to Denver the following weekend). I soon found that I could easily have used twice that amount of time or more and still not have done this trip justice or grown weary of it. Nonetheless I was able to hug the coast the whole way, even when 101 detours inland (like south of Tillamook, OR) and make a few stops here and there, though for every stop I did make there were at least ten I would have liked to make as well, and for each picture I took I could probably have taken another hundred (maybe it's a good thing I was time-limited). I had some cloudy days and some sunny days (happily more of those the further south I got) but they were all beautiful. To anyone considering a trip like this I would just point out that the two previous times I had driven south to north and this time I did the opposite and found it far superior, partly because it puts you in the right (outside) lane of the highway so you are closer to the edge and the view and the pull-offs are easier to access without having to cut across traffic, and partly because on the sunny days you are driving toward the light reflected off the water rather than away from it. So with that I'll let my pictures and commentary (here) fill in the details.
