Carlifornia Road Trip

[troutman]

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by Rhettzky

We're taking the PCH from Portland to San Diego on the 20th and have given it 5 or 6 days. Any tips or cool things to check out? I've looked into the avenue of giants, alcatraz, Hearst Castle, Big Sur Point, Pfeiffer Falls, Julia Pheiffer state park, McWay Falls, and Morro Rock. Just looking for other neat stops along the way.

are you going in summer?

If you can hit Santa Cruz on a Friday night, there is a cool concert on the beach. its at the pier.

Add Monterrey aquarium and 17-mile drive in Carmel to the list. 17-mile drive is like Big Sur, but a bit better

going through PCH, Santa Barbara downtown and the promanade at Santa Monica is pretty cool.

[Rhettzky]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

are you going in summer?

If you can hit Santa Cruz on a Friday night, there is a cool concert on the beach. its at the pier.

Add Monterrey aquarium and 17-mile drive in Carmel to the list. 17-mile drive is like Big Sur, but a bit better

going through PCH, Santa Barbara downtown and the promanade at Santa Monica is pretty cool.

We are leaving next monday and wow, that 17 mile drive looks incredible!

[Table 5]

Stop in Laguna Beach at Taco Loco for some of the best fish-tacos you'll ever have.

[Ace]

Looking for some input on a drive down to Southern California in October. I've done the trek once before the "quick way" through Salt Lake and Las Vegas. Time is important as I'll have a bunch of kids with me and i don't want to spend forever in the car, with that said i think an extra 5-6 hours of driving overall to take a much nicer route along the Pacific Coast Highway might be worth it. Anyone have a suggested coastal route to So-Cal from Calgary that's a good balance between pretty and time?

[Weitz]

I drove from San Fran to Seaside in September a bunch of years ago and it was an amazin drive.

I wouldn't do it in December though. Only because I don't think you would enjoy it as much. I mean we brought surf boards and would stop 3-4 times a day to surf or to hang out and took like 2 weeks to make the drive.

[shermanator]

Originally Posted by Ace

Looking for some input on a drive down to Southern California in October. I've done the trek once before the "quick way" through Salt Lake and Las Vegas. Time is important as I'll have a bunch of kids with me and i don't want to spend forever in the car, with that said i think an extra 5-6 hours of driving overall to take a much nicer route along the Pacific Coast Highway might be worth it. Anyone have a suggested coastal route to So-Cal from Calgary that's a good balance between pretty and time?

I would say take the Pacific Coast Highway from Monterey to as far South as you want to go. When I did it a decade ago, it was a 10 hour day, some spots you're going 30 around hairpin turns, and it's terrifying. Absolutely beautiful though.

[opendoor]

From Calgary, 5-6 extra hours isn't really going to get you any Pacific Coast Highway time. You're looking at probably 5 extra hours just to even get to the coast via interstates when compared to the Salt Lake City/Las Vegas route. And then there's the additional travel time of driving on slower coastal highways vs. interstates which adds 4-5 more hours even at the best of times.

But most importantly, traveling through Big Sur (probably the nicest part of the drive) is nearly impossible at this point. They've had a bridge failure (though that might be fixed by October) and a major landslide that has made the PCH impassable so you can't drive the coast the whole way. If you want to go through there you can only drive part way and then you have to either turn around or take a mountain road back out to the 101.