scagly

Hello!

We will be exploring the coast (big sur, carmel, monteray) before heading to the Oakland airport. We plan on arriving to the coast on a Thursday (from yosemite) and our flight leaves late morning on Saturday.

I was thinking of sleeping Thursday night in Big Sur or Carmel, and then sleeping Friday night in Santa Cruz. But, I have been reading a lot of threads about Santa Cruz, and while it seems to be a nice place, i'm wondering if we are better off staying in the Carmel area or HalfMoon on Friday nights as this is more our cup of tea. My only concern is that we need to be to the Oakland airport Saturday morning and it's hard to determine how long it'll take to get from the coast to Oakland.

I had some fellow Fodorites tell me that staying in Santa Cruz and driving to the Oakland airport in the morning is a good call, but i'm wondering if we would enjoy staying another night in the Carmel area instead (as we would prefer), but wondering if it will be too chaotic to get from Carmel to Oakland Saturday morning for our flight. Does anyone have any thoughts?

trippinkpj

If you are traveling early on a Sat morning to OAK (before 10 am), traffic should be light. Allow 3 hours from Carmel though I'm guessing it will be more like 2 1/2.

trippinkpj

From Santa Cruz, you would take Hwy 17 which turns into 880 right to Oak. More like 1 1/2 (maybe a little over) hours.

curmudgeon

Your drive from Carmel would be a bit longer (30-40 minutes?), but otherwise I wouldn't expect any problems. The fastest way would be to take hwy 156 to cut across from the coast to hwy 101. For a Saturday morning, I'd figure a bit over two hours.

J_Correa

I say that if Carmel is more your style, then stay the extra night there and just get up an hour earlier to head to the airport.

scagly

Thanks to all for your extremely helpful insight!!