We are getting married, which is wild to say out loud. And like anyone planning a wedding, we have been on the hunt for a place that actually feels like us. One spot that kept coming up was the Harbor House Inn; a quiet little cliffside hideaway up in Mendocino.

But if we were going to make the trip, I wanted to make it fun. So I rented a 2009 Porsche Boxster S. Thought of it partly as a test drive for a future autocross car. Well, the base model, at least. Not the S.

It had been years since I last drove stick. Fortunately, I got a little refresher in my friend Adam’s 2002 just a few days ago. Still, pulling out of the lot in a mid-engine roadster with a clutch pedal in the middle of San Francisco felt like jumping into the deep end.

I used to live in the city, and one of my favorite things was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. Bike, run, drive, didn’t matter. I even ran it during the San Francisco Marathon once. So getting to cross it now, top down in a Porsche, wind in our hair, sun bouncing off the Pacific... that hit different.

Our adventure begins with a beautiful 150-mile drive across the bridge from storied San Francisco.

Part of this trip was reconnaissance. If we’re asking friends and family to point their rentals up CA-128 in wedding clothes, the road needs to earn the miles. Beautiful, yes, but also humane: places to stretch, decent coffee, and bathrooms that don’t feel like a dare.

All part of the scouting plan.

We tested the route’s snack-to-scenery ratio with a quick lunch at Jumbo’s Win-Win, then clocked in at Gowan’s Cider Garden for a flight under the apple trees. Tart, crisp, a little sunshine in a glass. Spirits high; blood glucose higher.

To settle the sugar, we took a short, polite lap through Big Hendy Grove in Hendy Woods State Park. The redwoods keep their own weather; sound gets swallowed and your footsteps start behaving like you’re in a library.

State parks, in my experience, do a kind of gentle understatement their national cousins forgot. Fewer crowds, more birds getting on with their day. Ari paused to listen to the wind combing the needles.

Back on CA-128, the forest gathers into tall, patient colonnades. Trunk after trunk, evenly spaced like a plan drawn by a careful hand.

Then, almost without ceremony, the trees part and Highway 1 tips you into blue: the Pacific laid out with a ruler-straight horizon. If this is the drive our guests get, the road will do most of the hosting. We’ll bring the vows: the scenery has already RSVP’d.

Elk, CA

Elk is one of those coastal towns you can cross within a single song. The Pacific Coast Highway threads it like a ribbon: clipped hedges, weathered fences, and then nothing but water doing its endless, indifferent work.

We came here for Harbor House Inn, a place I’ve followed on Instagram for years, and the place we hope to bring everyone back to when we trade rings and speeches for sea air and clinking glasses.

It’s even better in person.

The lobby greets you with redwood and restraint. There’s a petrified slice of tree by the door. Thousands of years paused mid-sentence, quietly reminding you that our visit, like most human undertakings, is a brief cameo. Stand near it long enough and you start to feel pleasantly small, the way you do under a clear night sky when the stars refuse to make eye contact.

And almost immediately, you understand why.

The soundtrack here is the ocean. Out past the lawn, the rocks arc like set pieces on a chess board, and gulls annotate the scene without asking. It’s impossible not to think about who else has stood here, watching the same tide rearrange the same shoreline. Buildings change hands; the bluff is on a much longer lease.

Ari and I ducked in for the lunch course, daylight’s edit of the more elaborate dinner. Fewer plates, same sense of place.

Clean, bright flavors that feel like they’ve been lifted straight from the coast and garden, service that’s confident without narration. Magical, but not grandstanding.

We left feeling both anchored and a little rearranged. If a venue can set a tone for a day, this one says: keep it simple, let the land do the talking, and make sure everyone can hear the waves between courses.

Sounds like a great place for a wedding.

Mendocino

Between Los Angeles and San Francisco, there isn’t much coastline left that feels truly untamed. The Mendocino Coast, though, still belongs to mother nature: the wind has the upper hand, the cliffs give way abruptly, and the horizon seems endless. We wanted to feel a bit of that.

There’s nothing quite like pulling off the Pacific Coast Highway, leaving the car behind, and walking straight into fields that fall away into ocean.

Spring Ranch Trail is hardly a trek, but the scale of it fools you. The grasslands roll on as if they might never stop, punctuated only by low shrubs and the occasional pine, while the Pacific keeps flashing its silver-blue just beyond the bluff.

The path dips and rises, though gently. It’s less a hike than a stroll with scenery. Ari walked ahead in her purple jacket, and I trailed behind, the two of us small against the sweep of gold grasses and wide sky.

We stopped more than we walked. We listened to the wind rushing through the stalks, to take photographs, to stare at the horizon pretending we could see Japan.

At one turn the trail bent back toward the sea, and we paused to film the moment: Ari standing in the tall grass, the ocean swelling behind her, everything else swallowed by the sound of waves and wind.

Skunk Train

We wanted to get a sense of fun little things that our guests could do during their time here, so in Fort Bragg, we boarded the Skunk Train. The name undersells the charm.

Imagine a slice of Disneyland set loose in the redwoods: restored train cars with leather seats, families leaning out the windows with their phones, a conductor narrating in a voice equal parts tour guide and theme park ride operator.

It was undeniably touristy, but in the best way. The train rattled through a corridor of trees, the windows framing walls of green.

We rode out to a clearing where the cars stopped beside a timber pavilion strung with lights. There was live music, a beer stand, and the kind of festive atmosphere that made you half-expect animatronic bears to start singing.

And yet, it worked.

The mix of novelty and setting was strangely... comforting. A brief interlude where the redwoods became a stage set, and everyone, us included, became part of the plot.

Sea Ranch

On the way back to San Francisco, we pulled off at Sea Ranch. It’s hard to call it just a “stop”: the whole community feels like a thesis on how people and landscape might coexist without one trampling over the other. Low, timber-clad houses tucked into the bluff, rooflines tracing the wind, all of it blending into the grasslands and the sea beyond.

We ducked into the lodge for coffee and found ourselves in a living room of sorts: stone fireplace, long green sofas, children playing chess on the floor while the Pacific sat framed in glass behind them. It felt equal parts clubhouse and gallery, the kind of place you linger even if you don’t actually need to.

Sea Ranch isn’t loud about itself. It just sits there quietly, reminding you that design can be both beautiful and modest.

And sometimes, the best part of a road trip is simply finding a room with a view and staying put for a while.