Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip report: just back from California coast!

Just returned from a 10-day trip to California. We drove the coast from LA to Monterey and then visited the gold country near Sacramento. Here are the details for those who are interested: Day 1, we flew from Washington Dulles to LAX, nonstop on American. We had reserved a car through National for a total of $170 for all ten days, including taxes and unlimited free miles, and no charge for an additional driver or for dropping the car off in Sacramento! Yes, this was a great deal and it worked out really well. I like National's system. They arrange their cars by category and let you pick any car available in that category that they have in their parking lot, which were all 4-door Chevy Cavaliers in our case. Unfortunately, none of them had tape decks, so we went back to the desk and requested an upgrade to the intermediate category, which was an extra $50 (for a total of $220 for the whole 10 days -- still a great deal at about $22 per day!). This got us a 4-door Olds Alero (again, we got to look at all the cars available and pick it out ourselves, which is nice because you can skip the ones with high miles or the ones that smell like smoke.) We liked the Alero a lot more than the Cavalier. It had both a CD player and a tape deck. We thought National's service was great. Days 1-4, stayed with friends who live in Manhattan Beach, a cute area I'd never been to with lots of fun shops and restaurants and an excellent beach. While we were there, we went to Griffith Park in LA which was wonderful -- sort of LA's version of Central Park, with really nice hiking paths and horseback riding and a panoramic view of the city from the Griffith Park Observatory, which has a planetarium and museum (kind of like a miniature and slightly more dated version of the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC where I live). The Griffith Park Observatory will look familiar to anyone who's seen "Rebel Without a Cause." We also did some antiquing while we were in LA, on La Brea, which had some funky shops and one of the most amazingly beautiful flower shops I've ever seen (with an excellent little restaurant right in the flower shop, for salads, soups, sandwiches, etc.!). The weather for the 4 days we were in Manhattan Beach and LA was very nice but a little cooler than I expected. Highs were in the low to mid 70s and it was sunny. At night it cooled down to the low to mid 60s. I was glad I had brought long pants and a couple of sweaters & a jacket in addition to my shorts and t-shirts. A nice breakfast place right on the main drag in Manhattan Beach is called "Good Stuff" -- excellent whole wheat pancakes and omellettes. There is a fun blues bar in neighboring Hermosa Beach called Cafe Boogaloo with some great live acts and a low cover charge (about $5). Day 5, we headed north out of LA on Hwy. 1. Stopped in Santa Barbara to tour the Santa Barbara Mission, which was worth a stop -- interesting history and architecture. We were glad we paid the $3 apiece to tour the interior. There is a huge beautiful Fig tree in the back near the cemetery. We also had lunch in Santa Barbara at one of the favorite places we found along the way, a tiny little taco stand called "La Super-Rica Taqueria." It is so unobtrusive it doesn't even have a sign, and we drove by three times before we found it. It is listed in Frommer's California guide (which we found extremely helpful in planning this trip) and was delicious and inexpensive! Items are about $3 apiece but they're small so you will need two to fill you up. They also had a great selection of Mexican beers to go with the food, which were only $2 apiece -- can't beat that! We then kept heading north, and stopped at Morro Rock in Morro Bay to take pictures. Saw one lone sea otter floating around in the water. That night we stayed in Cambria, which was about a 5 hour drive from LA if you exclude the time we spent in Santa Barbara (about 2 hours) and Morro Bay (less than an hour). We stayed at the Castle Inn on Moonstone Beach Drive, right across from the ocean. The hotel was nothing special and didn't have great service, but we chose it because it was in Cambria (which we loved, and it was very convenient for our reservations to tour the Hearst Castle the next morning), and the price was right: The room was only $75 for a double with a king-sized bed, including a small continental breakfast of coffee, juice and danish. Our room didn't have an ocean view but we could have had one for only $10 more. That night we ate dinner in Cambria at an EXCELLENT restaurant called Robin's. It was highly recommended in Frommer's and they were right. They use lots of natural and organic ingredients. My salmon was fabulous and save room for the chocolate mousse if it's on the menu. Day 6, we woke up in Cambria and walked across the street from our hotel to Moonstone Beach and explored the beach and the tide pools. We were glad we did because there was a huge bunch of seals on the rocks! Got some great photos and saw some neat things in the tidepools -- starfish, sea cucumbers, anemones, and crabs. It was beautiful. Day 7: We left Cambria about 10:45 for our 11:30 tour reservation at Hearst Castle. We took the introductory tour, tour 1, which we both thought was fascinating. It is much hotter on top of that mountain than it is by the shore, and there is quite a view. It was definitely worth the $15 admission price and the 2 hours it took. We were glad we made our reservations in advance because those who just showed up had to wait hours for the next available tour. About 5 or 6 miles north of San Simeon we stopped at a beach that said "wildlife viewing" and there was an enormous group of elephant seals! They were very close and were putting on quite a show, fighting and bellowing. The naturalist there said they were all males (plus a few pups the females had left behind), and that they usually weren't there this late in the year, so we were glad we got to see them. We stopped for lunch a few miles up the road at Ragged Point, which has both a sit-down restaurant and a little take-away stand with picnic tables. Make sure you walk the path out back to get the view of the coast -- it's spectacular! After Ragged Point, the road up the Big Sur coast gets very narrow and steep and curvy, and there are no guard rails in some places. It was a lovely drive but very slow going, and more than once my boyfriend commented that he was glad we were driving south to north rather than north to south, so we were on the inside instead of next to the big dropoff! That night was our one big splurge of the trip: we stayed at Ventana in Big Sur. We negotiated a discount from their regular rate of $380 for their least-expensive room, down to $275. With tax, it was still $300. But we loved it. It was beautiful and relaxing. We got there just after 5:00, in time for their "complimentary"(!) wine and cheese and fruit, and we sat outside and relaxed from the stress of the road. There are pretty wildflowers all over the grounds. Our room was wonderful even though it was the "standard," with a great king-sized bed, mini-frig, CD player and TV with VCR, and a big deck overlooking a meadow and the ocean beyond. The larger rooms have fireplaces but we didn't miss having it. We had dinner that night at their restaurant, Cielo. Walking to dinner in the dark through their redwood forest along a lighted pathway is a truly enchanting experience. It feels like a fairy tale. The food and service in the restaurant were marvelous. Unfortunately, I got very sick that night after dinner and I'm pretty sure it was because of the mussel appetizer I ordered (since I was the only one who got sick, and the mussels were the only thing I ate that my boyfriend didn't try). Other than that one bad experience, Ventana was terrific. Breakfast was included and was a buffet of fruit, breads and pastries, cereals, juice and coffee. Day 8: After breakfast at Ventana, we headed up the coast and continued the long, curvy drive, stopping at numerous scenic overlooks for pictures. The best stop we made was at Point Lobos State Park, which had been recommended by a lot of people on this forum. I'm so glad I took the advice! What a place -- huge rocks with pounding surf and lots of wildlife: seals, elephant seals, and waterfowl. Wildflowers everywhere you looked. Gorgeous. From there we drove the few miles to Carmel and stopped there to poke around in a few shops, but most of them closed at 5 or 5:30, so that was disappointing. We drove to the Wilkies Motel/Inn in Pacific Grove, where we had reserved a room with a king-sized bed and partial ocean view for $85. It was fine, nothing special, but adequate, and the elderly gentleman who ran the motel was charming. If anyone is looking for a place to stay on the Monterey Peninsula for less than $100 I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. It didn't include breakfast but that was OK. We ate dinner that night in Pacific Grove at a Mexican restaurant called Peppers, which was delicious and inexpensive with HUGE portions. The guacamole was outstanding and the chiles rellenos were world-class! Beer and wine but no liquor license, so no margaritas, unfortunately. Day 9 we had purchased tickets in advance for Monterey Aquarium and got there at 9:30 as soon as it opened to avoid the crowds, which turned out to be wise. By the time we left at 12:15 it was packed. They feed the sea otters at 10:30 which is interesting to watch, and lots of the exhibits were neat, but our very favorite were all the varieties of jellyfish! They are upstairs, which for some reason was much less crowded than downstairs; maybe some people just don't make it up there. They have the jellyfish displayed amazingly well. They are all lit up and the music in the background is this sort of eerie space age/new age stuff that really adds to the experience of seeing the jellyfish. The kelp forest tank was neat too, with sharks in it. From Monterey we headed inland to visit relatives Grass Valley, which is about an hour northeast of Sacramento, in a totally different part of California. In one day we went from cool and foggy weather in Monterey, drove through the agricultural areas in the valley past vast fields of artichokes and other produce, then started climbing again. Grass Valley is sort of in the foothills of the Sierras, at an elevation of about 2000 feet. The weather there was much hotter and drier (mid-90s) than it had been on the Monterey Peninsula (mid-60s). Day 10: Grass Valley is in the Gold Country, near Nevada City and the Yuba River. These are old gold mining towns with a lot of charm and history. We liked this area a lot more than we expected to. We toured an old gold mine and hiked along the Yuba River and explored the towns. They are both very quaint with lots of interesting shops and pretty scenery nearby. We also tasted wines at the Nevada City winery, which wasn't bad, but we didn't like it enough to bring any bottles back with us. There is an excellent restaurant in Nevada City called New Moon, which is really first-class. You would not expect to find a restaurant like this in a city that size, but there it is. There is also a wonderful pottery shop in Nevada City where I picked up some nice raku as a souvenir. Day 11: Drove one hour from Grass Valley to Sacramento's airport, returned the car to National without mishap, and boarded our flight home! If anyone wants to post any questions, I will try to answer them, because others on this forum were helpful in planning my trip. If I have one piece of advice for anyone planning a similar trip, it would be to buy the Frommer's California book! (Yes I realize that's sacrilege on a Fodor's forum, but there you have it.) My other major piece of advice is to bring all kinds of clothing, because you're going to need everything from shorts and t-shirts to warmer things.