Visiting Californian national parks
 

My husband and I are on a Californian road trip from San Francisco in mid October for 4 weeks. We think that we would like to include national parks other than Yosemite which we are visiting after a few days in the city. We intend to spend the last ten days driving up the coast from San Diego and need to plan a further ten days taking in possibly Death Valley, Vegas and probably Joshua tree. Are we missing a trick? We want to spend our time enjoying the great outdoors, not shopping and spending too long in towns and cities. Are there better parks to visit and should we stay in them and if so for how long? We enjoy walking but not miles and miles and eating well and healthily and a good standard of accommodation. We are young retirees.

If you are going as far as Las Vegas, I would use those 10 days to visit Death Valley, Zion, Bryce, Grand Canyon and Joshua Tree. That's not an inordinate amount of driving if you're spreading it out over 10 days, especially if you are not doing a lot of hiking in any park.

I would strongly urge that you find somewhere in your schedule to include some big trees - sequoias and/or redwoods. (Redwoods live near the coast and are taller, sequoias live in the Sierra foothills and are thicker but less tall.) Note that you don't need to visit national parks to see many wonderful sights; there are many California <i>State</i> parks that hold their own against the national parks.

Look at the loop map I offered in your July thread - http://www.fodors.com/community/unit...-road-trip.cfm . I would recommend googling Henry Cowell or Big Basin state parks for coast redwoods, or the Calaveras Big Trees State Park for giant sequoias (more convenient to Yosemite than Sequoia National Park) as places you could visit without long detours. Henry Cowell and Big Basin are between San Francisco and the Monterey Bay; Calaveras Big Trees is very close to the marvelous gold rush country along CA Hwy 49, north of Yosemite.

To me, Joshua Tree offers a fantastic desert experience that's both easy and convenient in the context of road trip that involves coastal California. You can stay in funky Palm Springs, do a day trip to Joshua Tree, see a lot, and not have to travel great distances like you would with Death Valley. That's not to say Death Valley isn't worth the trip - it is, but it's a long, long way as a detour. From Palm Springs you can also take the PS Aerial Tram that runs from the desert valley floor up to snow country, a remarkable change over the space of a gondola ride.

Similarly, make a point of stopping at Point Lobos State Park just south of Carmel along CA Hwy 1. Again, not a national park, but probably ought to be for its combination of scenery and wildlife (marine mammals mostly.) Amazing and beautiful place.

You have a wide choice of parks:

https://www.nps.gov/state/ca/index.htm

October is a fabulous time along the CA coast -- I'd maybe use most of that extra time for the far northern Redwoods, Mendocino, Point Reyes, Bodega Bay.

You could visit Channel Islands off the coast, it is a National Park and often overlooked.

Was just up in Henry Cowell Redwoods SP and Big Basin SP. Both had awesome trees and easy hikes. There are really cute towns in the area too: Felton, Boulder Creek, etc.

On the coast, we really enjoyed Capitola, just south of Santa Cruz.

It sounds as though you are interested in the outdoors, not just national parks. In CA, we have state parks and national forests land as well as national parks - for example, the Big Sur coast has several state parks and most of the rest is national forests land.