Today's update is something I've been looking forward to for a while now. The section of Mullholland Highway between Little Sycamore Canyon Road and PCH was closed for several months, but now it is open again. So I fueled up the CCB Miata, put the top down, and got the camera rolling.
It doesn't get much better in the canyons than it was on this drive. The weather was perfect: clear, sunny, and warm, just like a postcard of California. There was almost no traffic, and even the road surface was good. This is what it's all about.
Now, this is really just the last segment of Mulholland, running from Decker Canyon down to the Pacific Coast Highway and Leo Carrillo beach. When it was originally constructed in 1924, it was a continuous road that would take motorists from the Cahuenga Pass in the Hollywood Hills all the way to the coast near the Ventura County line, where it still ends today.
There is a section that was never paved, appropriately known as "Dirt Mulholland," that was still open to motor vehicles until the 1990s, however I don't think I'd want to take the Miata there even if it were still an option. The eastern side of the paved road, from Cahuenga Boulevard to Dirt Mulholland is now known as Mulholland Drive, and is home to some of the most desirable real estate in the Los Angeles area. That's a road I'll have to film sometime soon.
From the unpaved segment westward, the road picks back up under its original name, Mulholland Highway. But even this has not been uninterrupted since the Woolsey Fire in 2018. The section west of Cornell Road and east of Kanan Road, known as "The Snake," has been blocked off since then, and it doesn't seem like they'll ever reopen it, unfortunately. If they ever do, I'll be there shortly after.
But for now, I'm happy that this last leg of Mulholland is open again.
Once we get to the coast, we head north on PCH toward next week's road. Along the way we pass by the famous Neptune's Net, a seaside dining spot featured in such classic films as "Point Break," and "The Fast and the Furious," which is basically "Point Break" with cars instead of surfboards.
