15 days driving through California
 

This is a short summary of my recent 15 day trip to California with my wife and 12 year old daughter. This is the culmination of a fairly long discussion regarding the itinerary posted here http://www.fodors.com/community/unit...-itinerary.cfm

As you can see in that thread, I started with a mega plan of covering 3 states in 15 days with 2000+ miles of driving and ended up doing a trip with most of the time spent only in SoCal area. Here is the high level itinerary we followed with the hotels we stayed and key POIs visited.

4 nights in LA (Extended Stay Glendale) - Universal, Six Flags, Bus tour of city with beaches
3 nights in San Diego (Hampton Inn Mission Valley) - SeaWorld, Zoo, USS Midway, La Jolla Cove
1 night in Bishop (Creekside Inn) - walked across town, visited "Eric Schats Bakkery"
2 nights in Yosemite (Curry Village - heated tents) - Valley, Glacier Point
2 nights in San Francisco (Travelodge Presidio) - Golden Gate Bridge/park, Alcatraz, FW area
>> Drive through Santa Cruz - Boardwalk, Mystery Spot >>
1 night in Monterey (Holiday Inn Cannery Row) - Aquarium, Carmel area
>> Drive through Big Sur including Pacific Grove, Point Lobos, Bixby, JPB Park and many short stops >>
1 night in Pismo Beach (Inn at the Cove) - Pismo, Avila beaches
>> Drive through Santa Ynez, Santa Barbara >>
1 night near LAX (Residence Inn LAX) - relaxed after a terrible drive back to LA

To start with, this was a "low budget" trip, with a fixed amount of $6000 to be spent, excluding flight tickets, This limit made it quite challenging, especially for deciding the hotel and food options during the trip. However doing advance booking and using my gold/platinum memberships in Hilton/IHG/Marriott properties combined with AAA discounts helped to get good rates in most of these hotels. In the end we did manage to complete the trip with $186 remaining in hand!

This is the actual route. Total drive including short side tracks was 1566 miles.

https://goo.gl/maps/tcnRy

Btw, we rented a 2015 Jeep Cherokee from LAX which is used for the entire trip.

Thanks. Please fill in your detailed thoughts when you get a chance.

I remember your original thread -- quite an improvement over what you initially planned and lucky that Tioga Pass opened early this year.

Thanks for coming back to report in after your trip. It is nice to see where you started in your planning, and what ended up actually happening. This will help future travelers immensely.

fantastic trip very beatiful i'dlike

i'm sorry for my english nice to meet you by Donato from italy

good report with detail budgeting!