Post Ranch Inn

Posts was a post office before it was anything else. One opened at the Post family's homestead in 1889, and this stretch of coast still answers to the name. Three generations ranched the land. In the early 1980s the fourth, Billy Post, and his wife, Luci, set about making an inn, and sealed the partnership with a handshake and a shot of Jack Daniel's. Mickey Muennig drew it, and it opened in 1992 on a cliff 1,200 feet above the Pacific. Much of it curves, in cedar trimmed with copper, and the Ocean Houses have grass and wildflowers for roofs. In the Pacific Suite the wood runs up the walls, a stove burns in the corner, and glass doors open onto a terrace with nothing past its rail but the hillside falling to the sea.

Recommended for couples who want the coast at its most dramatic, at an inn where nobody checks in under 18. The Jade and Meditation pools are infinity pools kept between 95 and 102°F, with the Pacific for a far end, and at the Jade the inn's astronomy enthusiast brings out a telescope for the planets, which is the best argument there is for staying in the water after dark. Justin Barrett, a local jade diver, teaches carving in Big Sur jade, a nephrite found only on this coast. Breakfast at Sierra Mar comes with the room, from the Chef's Garden down in the meadow. Lunch and dinner are prix-fixe, so most of the deciding happens on a list of more than 3,200 wines. The Posts opened a small restaurant called Rancho Sierra Mar in 1945, and the name has since lost only the ranch.