Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report Thanks to all for California trip guidance

My husband and I are back home from a 3 week driving holiday in California and I especially wanted to say thank you to all those that helped us find places we would never have known about otherwise. If I’ve forgotten to thank someone it’s not intentional. A quick rundown on the trip:

Brisbane to LAX direct
Santa Monica
Lone Pine
June Lake
South Lake Tahoe
Sacramento
Santa Cruz
Pacific Grove
San Simeon
Ventura
Glendale
LAX to Brisbane direct

Thank you to Jean for the suggestion of staying at June Lake. We ended up at a cabin there for 2 nights and could have stayed a week, great place. Thanks to mlgb and DebbieDoesDulles for the Glendale option at the end of our trip which worked wonderfully. It suited us in so many ways, close to LAX, walking distance to shopping and restaurants, easy drive to Huntington Library and Nethercutt Car Museum. Also a big thanks to maitaitom for reviewing both the Nethercutt and Huntington. We really enjoyed both of them, I loved the peacefulness of the Huntington, as well as the art (and the gorgeous shop), my husband particularly loved the cars at Sylmar.

We pre-booked the first two nights at Santa Monica and the last two at Glendale. Along the way I booked ahead a couple of days, only when I realised we would be somewhere popular over a weekend, like Lake Tahoe and Cambria/San Simeon. That worked well for us as we had a rough plan worked out but changed it slightly as we went along. We had free wifi in all our hotels (places like Vagabond Inn, Days Inn, Larkspur, Quality Inn) but usually found it frustratingly slow which may have been due to our netbook.

A few weeks before leaving home we altered the route to drive up to Yosemite via the 395 eastern road instead of driving up the Pacific Coast Hwy first. That was to hopefully avoid the fires. When we finally drove south down the coast, heading back towards LA, all the state parks were closed so we didn’t see as much we intended.

Lake Tahoe was a bit disappointing. We drove around the lake one day and were amazed to find if you wanted to stop by the lake, park the car, have a picnic, use the toilets, you had to pay. We have paid for national parks before but weren’t expecting it at Tahoe and were taken aback. Also a lot of lake frontage was owned privately and you couldn't access the lake as much as we expected. Parking at some of the major tourist spots like Emerald Bay was nearly impossible. We walked from our hotel in South Lake Tahoe to the beach area where you had to pay to enter the beach. The concept made a poor impression on us.

OK, moving on to other places we loved. Yosemite – this is our third visit to the park, we really wanted to see the eastern side and drove in from Lee Vining. June Lake was small and peaceful and an easy drive into Yosemite. Pacific Grove had some gorgeous old houses which I really enjoyed. My husband was keen to visit the Hearst Castle again, we chose a different tour and booked the day before with no problems. We shopped a lot, mostly in the cheaper stores like Sears and JC Penney and got some great bargains. Also loved Barnes and Noble - I could cheerfully live in one of their big stores. Starbucks coffee was a hit, we don't drink Starbucks in Australia any more, it’s changed a lot since a buyout and tastes quite different (horrible) to their coffee overseas.

Thanks again to everyone for their two cents worth and help with my questions while planning.

Kay