A LEISURELY LOOP ON THE 17-MILE DRIVE.

Byline: Eric Noland Travel Editor

PEBBLE BEACH - The beachgoers were having quite a time of it, swimming in the cove, slapping the water, stretching out languidly in the sand. It was thus unexplainable why so many of them looked so forlorn, gazing up toward the bluff with lonesome, hound-dog faces.

But, then, it's never been easy to gauge the relative contentment of a harbor seal.

Dozens of them had the run of a Cypress Point beach on a recent morning, and their behavior provided the highlight of a swing around 17-Mile Drive.

The famed driving tour of the Monterey Peninsula's southern reaches zig- zags through thick cypress forests, skirts golf courses and picks its way along the coast just north of Carmel. The land through which it courses is privately owned, however, so you'll have to pay a fee - $8 per vehicle - for the privilege of surveying its postcard sights. Five toll booths are positioned at strategic entry points to make sure no freeloaders sneak in, but the unsurpassed scenery is well worth the fare.

From Carmel, you can reach the drive's southernmost gate by taking Ocean Avenue (the main drag) to the coast and turning right. Then it's a good idea to bear right at the first fork of 17-Mile Drive and make the loop counter-clockwise - the preferred direction of tourist flow. This will save the coastline for last and enable you to finish up at Pebble Beach's fabled golf course.

Included in the entry fee is a brochure and map of the drive. It provides information on various points of interest - and, ahem, also a comprehensive listing of the Pebble Beach Co. retail stores, restaurants, hotels and golf courses that you'll pass along the way.

Although there is a confusing web of roads on the peninsula, the 17-Mile Drive is marked with signs at every crossing.

Be sure to make time for a stop at Spanish Bay. It was here, in 1769, that explorer Juan Portola camped on the beach with his crew as they hunted for Monterey Bay - just a few miles to the north. (It's assumed he was exempt from paying any fee.) There is a picnic area here and a path along the shoreline.

A little farther on is Bird Rock, which has a frosted crown as a result of what birds leave behind. If you didn't bring binoculars, drop some coins into one of the telescopes in the parking area and train it on the water at the base of the rock. You'll likely observe harbor seals and sea lions gliding through the sheltered waters and clambering atop low rocks.

It was a short distance down the road, at Cypress Point Lookout, that we were treated to the show staged by the harbor seals on the beach. They were particularly comical as they shimmied from the water's edge up onto the dry sand. A chain-link fence around the lookout prevents brazen shutterbugs from disturbing them.

Along this forbidding stretch of coastline, you might be impressed with just how hardy the Monterey cypress is. The trees climb defiantly out of some of the steepest, rockiest terrain imaginable. Their scraggly boughs jut far out at odd angles, as if for balance in the winds that regularly lash this coast.

Their champion is surely the Lone Cypress, a mandatory photo op for everyone on this driving loop, it seems. Believed to be 250 years old, the tree clings to what appears to be a solid-granite outcropping just offshore.

Wind and salt spray have not posed near as great a threat to the Lone Cypress as have hundreds of tourists posing beneath it for pictures over the years. After all that trauma, it requires cables to secure it, plus a snow fence on the coastal bank to deter people from walking out to it.

A final feature of 17-Mile Drive before the return to Carmel is Pebble Beach Golf Links, a course that was commissioned way back in 1916 by Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph and then the owner of this rugged stretch of coastline.

Visitors are welcome at the lodge here - perhaps because it has 15 retail outlets and four eateries - and no one will give you a second look if you wander out back to gaze over the 18th fairway and green.

This is one picturesque place for a round of golf, even if it does cost $350 to play 18 holes. For years, this course welcomed pros and celebrities to an event that went by the folksy nickname of Crosby Clambake, but in the wake of Bing's death it eventually assumed the more ponderous title of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.

The 17-Mile Drive can be accessed from Ocean Avenue in Carmel to the south, from Highway 1 on the east, and from three entrances off Highway 68 in Pacific Grove to the north.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, map

Photo:

(1 -- color) The Lone Cypress defiantly holds its grounding on a rock outcropping.

(2 -- 3) Golfers on the 18th green at Pebble Beach, top, are in danger of being distracted by the sweeping overlook of the Pacific Ocean. Telescopes on the 17-Mile Drive, above, provide a closer look at the wildlife on Bird Rock.

Map:

17-MILE DRIVE