suzi56

My husband and I will be traveling to California in early October. I want to go to Los Angeles and a coworker suggested we fly to the northern part of California and drive down the coast, Route 1? Has anyone ever done this and how many days would you suggest for this adventure?

tracys2cents

Lots of people do this either northbound or southbound, check the one way rates on car rentals before you book your airfare as one way might save $150 over the other. You might want to go all the way down to San Diego, too.

Just do a forum search on California Coast and tons of previous threads will pop up.

J_Correa

This is probably the most popular road trip in the state, so there is no shortage of information about it. This site, other sites on the internet and guidebooks are great sources.

At the minimum, you should spend 2 days enroute from LA to SF, spending the night in the Cambria, Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo area.

If you have more time, you should add more nights to the trip so you can stop in more places. This is a beautiful area and is best seen at a relaxed pace.

Shar

It is long and very curvey. I believe that some of the route is inland - not all on the coast - it's been awhile since I've done it. It is beautiful but it takes awhile to drive it. 2 days at a minimum to enjoy the views and as has been said - a slower pace. Cambria is lovely stope for overnight but Morrow Bay would be cheaper and be sure to have tickets for Hearst Castle - a must see if you are in the area.

suzi56

Sorry, I'm sort of new to this, what is a thread?

easytraveler

A thread is a topic that is being discussed. You just started a new thread titled "California tro[".

What tracy was saying is that you can go to the empty box at the top of the page and write in specifically what you want, e.g. "California coast" "California central coast" "California Highway 1" "California Big Sur" "Monterey/Carmel" etc. etc. (Only one string of words at a time!)

What will happen is that on the left, you will find listed the previous "threads" on whatever topic you have typed in. Most questions, especially on popular destinations, have been answered before and many times in great detail.

If, after reading the previous postings, you still have specific questions, please come back.

J_Correa

When I am planning a trip to someplace totally new, where I don't have any specifics about what I want to do and see, I like to start with the Eyewitness Guides because they have lots of pictures to help me decide basically where I want to go. They are rather short on detail, so once I have my basic itinerary down, I use other sources to focus my planning. I usually just check the eyewitness guides out of the library because it doesn't matter if they have the very latest info - I just use them to start my planning.

If you want to get some idea of what the coast between LA and SF looks like, do a Yahoo image search on Big Sur. Gorgeous.