When I planned the long weekend road trip to Big Sur, my uncle told me he would never do the drive again, "Big Sur is one of the scariest drives I've ever done." I overconfidently laughed as he retold his stories from the winding roads of the Pacific Coast Highway in the Big Sur area. Now, it was payback.

Taking in sunrise at Bixby Bridge while sipping tea. Photo by Dalton Johnson

The morning was dark. The visibility was low as the headlights reflected at me in the fog. Twisting and turning our way towards Bixby Bridge, we wanted to beat the crowds.

Coming from the north, headed south, the cliffs were just to our right. Falling what looked like thousands of feet directly into the ocean. Sometimes, there were railings, other times there were not. Driving our self-converted, van life rig, down the Pacific Coast Highway the road felt narrow. Barely keeping the long van between the lines, I was that guy moving slower than the speed limit. The headlights of cars behind us started to line up, but there was nowhere to turn off.

Leaning into the turns, left and right, the entire van rocked. A cabinet, we forgot to lock, swung open. Banging every time we completed an S-turn, adding a little extra white to my knuckles with each slam.

Looking down at my GPS, it read two miles. Phew, I can make that.

Back and forth we swayed, south for those two miles towards Bixby Bridge. The final turn revealed the concrete bridge just as the fog began to lift, as though we were in a movie and we pulled into a parking spot that overlooked the bridge and the ocean.

We made. I'll confess, my uncle's story was true, driving in Big Sur can be scary.

Thankfully, we were here now, boiling water on the van life stove to make some morning tea and coffee, so we could go sit on the cliff and watch the colors change from black to blue to golden.