Durning the springtime couple years ago I took a big road trip around the US, and drove the PCH from LA to SF, but I was really just driving through and didn't stop many places. Beautiful road though.
I don't remember where we were, but it was about 7 or 8 am on a kind of drab, overcast morning. I pulled over somewhere that I saw a surfer walking through a field to a little cove. Might have been some state park or something. So I pulled over and followed him and I see him paddling out into the surf and there were freaking whales coming up all around him. It was just so wild. It was the coolest moment of that leg of the trip, and it didn't even cost me a dime.