Who suffers from incurable bouts of California dreamin’? We do! Think about it. Long afternoons watching the sun dance on Pacific waves. Gazing skyward into the towering Redwood Trees. Reliving Hollywood History along the Walk of Fame. Enjoying the house that Walt Built. California boasts an endless number of activities, sports, museums, landmarks, and general things to experience. You could spend months there. But let’s be fair. You aren’t going to spend months touring one state. That leaves 2 approaches to visiting the Golden State. One approach is to break the state into regions and plan several shorter trips. Alternately, you could blast through the state in a week, snap a photo of surfers, catch a selfie with the Golden Gate Bridge, and call it done. We are never in favor of the “If Its Tuesday It Must Be Belgium” approach to travel. So we recommend breaking the state into regions.
California is big! It’s the third largest state in the US in area, being eclipsed only by Texas and Alaska. It houses roughly 10% of the entire US population. The altitude range includes both the highest and lowest points in the Continental US. It is one of the largest agricultural regions on Earth. It is the world’s 6th largest economy. The state houses 3 of the largest 10 cities in the country.
A trip from the shores of the Pacific to the Eastern State border will take 4 hours while a journey from the Mexican Border to the northern border with Oregon will take over 12 hours. And those drives don’t include stops to charge your Tesla or time spent enjoying our lovely gridlocked urban centers. I tell you all this because California is huge! It takes some planning to prioritize what you are going to see in the nation’s 31st state.
We recommend the basic breakdown of regions:
- Southern California – From San Diego to Santa Barbara
- Central Coast – Santa Barbara to Monterey
- Bay Area – San Francisco and its environs
- Northern California – The several hours of expansive beauty that unfolds as you drive north of San Francisco
- Eastern Sierras – Lake Tahoe to Bakersfield
- Eastern Desert – Death Valley, Joshua Tree and the eastern desert to the Colorado River
That’s 6 regions! And each region really needs at least 10 days to explore well.
Since we live in Los Angeles, we chose to plan a 10-14 day trip to some areas of California we have never visited, or we were just kids on our last adventure. We are not visiting any of the big cities, since we’ve spent a lot of time in them. We are focusing on a loop through Central and Eastern California, using San Francisco as a quick stopover. With that in mind, let’s pull out a map, fire up a browser, and get started!
Before we jump into planning this adventure, be sure to reference our general trip planning articles. Once you’ve brushed up on the general trip planning strategies, circle back to this article.
In planning this trip, we arm ourselves with 4 items:
- A map of California
- A spreadsheet for organizing your trip details
- Access to a web browser to look up various places to visit, etc.
- Blank calendar pages with the dates you want to travel (or just a generic calendar if you don’t have specific dates yet)
Where are we going?
We will be visiting our son who is a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. This is a 3.5 hour drive from our home in Pasadena. So our first leg will be the drive to “SLO” and spending the night with him.
To get a feel for our trip plans, we get a blank calendar template and simply write in a location each day. That provides us with a visual way of checking ourselves. If you don’t do that you risk creating a trip that is 5 weeks long or you are driving 1,000 miles one day!
For us, here’s our general itinerary:
Drive to San Luis Obispo (220 miles), spend 1 night
San Luis Obispo to San Francisco via Highway 101, spend 2 nights in San Francisco
- See Muir Woods National Park while staying in San Francisco
Travel North to Napa Valley (50 miles from San Francisco), spend 3 nights
- Wine Tasting
Travel to Sacramento (67 miles from Napa), spend 2 nights
- Visit Sutter’s Fort in downtown Sacramento
- Visit Sutter’s Mill Gold Rush Camp – 50 miles east of Sacramento
Drive to Donner Memorial State Park, spend the evening in Lake Tahoe, 1 night
Travel to Yosemite, spend 3 nights
Travel from Yosemite to Manzanar National Monument via Highway 395, option to spend 1 additional night in the Sequoia National Forest after visiting Manzanar.
Manzanar is a 3.5 hour drive from our home.
The total number of nights for this trip is 12 (13 if you spend that extra last night).
This itinerary allows for ample time to explore the sites listed. You see, however, that it doesn’t allow much time in San Francisco or its surrounding area. You will have to plan accordingly to adjust for things you wish to experience along the way.
This itinerary also takes us from San Luis Obispo to San Francisco via Highway 101 and Not the beautiful coastal route – Route 1. If you’ve never done this drive, be sure to add an additional night in Monterey and experience this amazing drive.
We load up a spreadsheet with the date down the A column and then destination, mileage, points of interest, hotel reservations, cost, and any other items you want to include. The spreadsheet is key. We have planned everything from week trips to the Grand Canyon to multi-week journeys through Africa and Europe using a spreadsheet.
When are we going?
Most times, when you plan a trip, you know generally when you want to travel. But sometimes you just say, “I want to go there” but have no further details. A road trip in California seems like it could happen any time of year. For the most part you are right. But there are a couple caveats.
To make the drive from Yosemite to Highway 395, the road has to be free from snow. So we will be going sometime in the late summer, after our son goes back to school. Unless you plan on skiing, Yosemite and Lake Tahoe are not good destinations in winter.
Spring in Coastal California is lovely – if you like down to the ground fog. The weather can be spectacular, but it can be gloomy. May Gray and June Gloom are common weather terms here.
The further up the coast you explore, the more rain you can encounter. The Golden State actually refers to the Gold Rush, not the sunshine. Be prepared. It can often rain in the summer up state. Some of the coldest winters I’ve ever spent were summer afternoons in San Francisco.
For us, September is a generally good time to travel in California. The weather is generally benign, the kids are all back in school, and with the exception of the occasional forest fire, the air is clear and blue.
Trip Details
We always make sure of open hours when we set up a trip. That way we don’t arrive at a location only to find out they are closed for a private event. Lucky for us, barring film shoots, pandemics, and federal government budget shutdown threats, all of the places we want to visit are open every day.
We use quite a few online references for activities and out of the way things to do. Tripadvisor, local tourist websites, and other local guides online are extremely useful. As we presented in the overview article, different websites are useful for different areas. Don’t be locked into a specific website for every trip.
We will drive from our home, so we don’t need flights or rental vehicles. That makes this trip extremely simple to plan. We always book lodgings that can be cancelled close to check in. That way we can change our plans if desired. In Yosemite, we will have to lock into a hotel as it’s one of the most popular places to visit in the United States.
Referencing back to the calendar, we work out the day-by-day schedule. Using our general itinerary outlined above, along with our online resources, we lay out the detailed trip.
Next, you need some lodging reservations. Whether you are looking for hotels, motels, Air BnBs, or RV parks, fire up their browsers and see what you can find in each destination.
And that’s about it. All you need to do from here is charge up your camera batteries, buy some photo cards, and pack.
As always, this itinerary is general. Your personal interests will guide you to what you want to experience. So, get out there, plan a trip and #goexplore!