California coast road trip planner
We hiked the Lady Bird Johnson Loop and Trillium Falls trails. Kuchel Visitor Center to get maps and a good handle on where else to visit. The next day was checking out the Redwood National Forest near Orick. We basically spent the day coming down from Oregon visiting the upper parts of the parks. There are no campgrounds or lodging within the Redwoods National Park, so finding your own room & board around any of the towns we listed above will be your best bet. It seemed pretty central to a lot of the places we wanted to visit while there. Ultimately, we decided on beautiful Trinidad, CA.
There are plenty of suitable towns to stay in, from Crescent City, Klamath, and Orick and to the north, to Arcata, McKinleyville, and Eureka to the south. There was some debate as to where to stay on this leg of the trip.
This is going to be the one stop on the road trip where we stay multiple days. Do your own research to find things that pique your interest! We give you a couple good ideas, but the parks/attractions/etc. The true experience in this road trip comes with what you do (and find) during the drives from one spot to the next. A lot of the spots we chose to stay the night at are simply waypoints for breaking up the days evenly. But of course, you can go which ever direction you want! This trip can be reversed, however a Pacific Coast road trip should head south… shouldn’t it? I mean, there is nothing stopping you from going North, but that just seems wrong for some reason. Renting a vehicle on the spot can sometimes be disastrous, with low inventory or – at worst – nothing available. Please schedule your car rental ahead of time (preferably when you book your flights). In this trip, we will have a lot of driving, so you’re going to want to get a very comfortable and spacious rental car at the Portland airport. Next we pass through Mendocino, CA before finally arriving in San Francisco. Much of this stretch of road is called the Pacific Coast Highway, and is an iconic American drive.įrom there we will work our way down the coast, stopping at a few places in Oregon before spending multiple nights in Redwood National Park. From there, we will follow US-101/US-1 along the coastline for over 600 miles (966 km). In this road trip, we start in Portland, Oregon, and head immediately to the Pacific Coast.