I am planning how best to use 11 nights between flying in and out of San Francisco at the end of June. My tentative plan so far is as follows:

4 nights San Francisco (hire a car at the end of this)
1 night in the wine region (Sonoma/Napa?)
4 nights in Yosemite NP
2 nights in Monterey (or somewhere around this area)

Are there alternative places I should consider staying to make this a more sensible drive or should I juggle the number of days around a bit. We ae looking for a good mix of things to do for this trip, balanced between big city and national parks etc.

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

I would add a night or two to San Francisco, and spend less time at Yosemite, if it were me. We were in San Francisco for three nights, and we felt we barely scratched the surface.

I'd recommend maybe dropping a day or two in Yosemite and when you visit the Monterey area, drive down to Big Sur. It is well worth the time. If you like the B&B experience, stay overnight in Pacific Grove. It is incredibly beautiful. Also, in terms of wine country, I highly recommend Sonoma. Both Napa and Sonoma have great wines, but especially during the weekend, Napa can be way over crowded. Shoot for a weekday, and pick your wineries carefully.

We did a very similar trip a number of years ago, except we stayed at Yosemite 6 days. Althought we didn't see as much of SF as we could of (and just did a return trip to JUST SF), I still wouldn't have cut the days in Yosemite. Depends on perssonal preference.

~Liz

The availability of lodging in and around Yosemite may be the driving factor for your itinerary. See what is available, nail it down, and then build the rest of the itinerary around that.

In general, I think your itinerary is pretty good. I don't think 4 nights in Yosemite is too much, although in the interest of seeing more things, I think it might be a good idea, as others have mentioned, to cut one night out and use that time to drive up the Big Sur coast. It is really a beautiful drive and would be a shame to miss it.

Thank you for all the replies, these are really helpful. I will start to look at Yosemite right away. Hopefully because my days here will be non-weekend then that should help a bit.

If I decide to travel from Yosemite to part way down the coast (south of Monterey), where would be a good place to go to?

I think I'd rather drive north up the Pacific Highway and do this to Monterey for the last night before leaving from SFO.

Come visit Napa and enjoy the great wines of the valley.

I would hit the the coast at Morro Bay (Hwy 46) or Cambria (Hwy 33). That is the southern tip of the Big Sur area. There are some interesting things further south, but with limited time, that is what I would do.

The drive from Yosemite Valley should take you about 5 hours and there isn't a lot to see along the way - mostly farmland. If you leave Yosemite reasonably early in the morning, you can get to the Cambria/Morro Bay area early afternoon and have time to do some sightseeing there.

Then the next day, you can spend most of the day making your way up Hwy 1 to Monterey, which will give you plenty of time to stop off along the way.

Thanks for the reply. I am definitely going to consider going further down Route 1 than Monterey and I'll take a look at the route you suggested from Yosemite.

I have driven from San Francisco to LA about 6 years ago but looking back it seemed incredibly rushed (but that was all we had the time to do back then). This time I want to see that part more leisurely and my travel partner will be a newbie to that area.

Roughly how many miles is it from the Cambria/Morro Bay to Monterey?

Roughly 100 miles.