Friday likely means July 20th 2018 by the way.
Highway 1 reopens Friday, ending 18 months of epic U-turns along California's coastal journey
The Mercury News · 1 day ago
Highway 1 reopens Friday, ending 18 months of epic U-turns along California’s coastal journey
After 18 months, iconic route will reopen
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GORDA — Finally, the iconic Highway 1 — the “longest dead end” in California — will reopen at this scenic outpost south of Big Sur on Friday, relieving 18 months of epic inconvenience along the coastal journey between the Bay Area and LA. It also will end a baffling phenomenon that has left thousands of tourists making the most-frustrating U-turns of their lives.
Despite numerous flashing road signs for 65 miles announcing “Road Closed at Gorda, No Detour” thousands of tourists blew right past the warnings, screeching to a halt at the roadblock spanning the two-lane highway and providing nightly entertainment for the locals on the porch of the Gorda General Store. Motorists have rammed the gate more than once. Fuming couples often wildly gesticulate in the front seats. But most just brake and sit in the middle of the highway, stopped, for minutes.
“We call it the ‘pause of disbelief,’” said Shena Ellis, the store manager who bears the news that yes, they really do need to turn around and drive two hours north, back through Big Sur to Monterey, and that their trip to Hearst Castle will take more than four hours instead of 40 minutes. She tries to be chipper: “‘Big Sur, so nice you get it twice!’ I’ve said it so many times and they never laugh, not once.”
Well, all that excitement will be behind the good folks of Gorda and their wayward travelers come Friday when the longest closure in the highway’s history comes to an end. They are three months ahead of schedule to finish the $54 million project to rebuild the road after Big Sur’s largest recorded landslide buried a quarter-mile stretch of the highway at Mud Creek.
The stories from Gorda are endless and comedic, involving bubbles and hula hoops and a bumper-to-bumper Christmas Day meltdown.
But as anyone who lives and works in the other hippie hamlets along Highway 1 can attest, the closure has tested the resolve of even the most enlightened locals who have endured countless, cascading and overlapping natural disasters here. The opening comes none too soon — at the peak of the Summer Road Trip season.
When the road closures from the 2016 Soberanes Fire are factored in, along with the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge failure last year and the construction of the Paul’s Slide tunnel, Friday’s ribbon cutting will mark the first time in two years travelers will be able to drive straight through from Monterey to Hearst Castle and beyond. During an excruciating eight months of that time, the town of Big Sur — 25 miles south of Carmel — was cut in half, making the southern side an island, cut off on both sides.
end quote from:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/07/15/highway-1-reopens-friday-ending-18-months-of-epic-u-turns-along-californias-coastal-journey/
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