fastduo

My wife and I will be taking a trip out to Cali next week. We will be arriving in San Fran and staying for a couple of days. We then want to take a leisure trip down the PCH to LA and then fly back to Miami from LAX. Possibly spending 2 days in LA. That will give us about 3 days for the cruise down on PCH.
I am looking for info on things to do and "no miss" places to see while on my trip.
Any tips would be appreciated.
Thanks.

ieatv8

Could always spend a day & night at Hearst castle.
Take Hwy 1 from Carmel to Morro bay. That will keep u right on the coast.
Def take the Route 154 cutoff alittle S of Santa Maria to pick up the 101 again in Santa Barbara. Check out Cold Springs Tavern(if its still there?)
I did this in the early 80's on my Harley and continued up into Oregon.
Very impressive!! Enjoy!!

habu

here are some of my favorite highlights along PCH.

Monterey Bay Aquarium
Carmel by the Sea plenty of shopping and sight seeing. Cool place
BIG SUR simply gorgeous. To be among the big redwoods is simply breathtaking. If you can get to the "hidden beach" then that is good too. I know how to drive to it, but directions would be a little harder. Pfieffer Big Sur State Park has several hikes and trails that reach or pass wonderful waterfalls and the big one gets you out to an ocean view. I love this place.

There is a lighthouse out on the coast between Big Sur and San simeon, I know they have tours but have never been able to check it out. Looks fantastic. Apologies because I have forgotten the name.

Past San Simeon & Hearst Castle is a little town called Cambria, again more shopping and a neat little town.
Morro bay - eh so-so for me. Plenty of Photo ops and of course, shopping.
Pismo Beach - very nice One of my favorite places to visit once a year. Great BBQ at Mo's Smokehouse, believe it or not. Of course there is the sand dunes here too.
San Luis Opisbo - College town plenty to do.
Solvang a old-town dutch setting here. The Little Mermaid with the Apple Skeevers (can't speel it write ) Worth the trip. Don't forget to visit the ostrich farm on the way.

This takes you into Santa Barbara It's been awhile since I've been there, drove through it last weekend on the way to Solvang though.
Carpenteria is next Small beach town, Again another cool place
Ventura is 16 or so miles south of Carpenteria. Great place. Just before you pull into Ventura there is a beach day park Calledto sit back, right on the ocean and watch the sun come up or go down. You'll likely see dolphins playing in the surf. Any Time we go to Pismo or Solvang we rest up at Rincon to catch our breath, stretch before we head into LA.

After Ventura you start getting into Oxnard, thousand oaks, Calabassas...etc and much closer to LA. I love the CA central coast and Ventura is about the end of that. There is a ton to do here in LA, of course, these are just some of the highlights down PCH/101.... BTW PCH becomes Hwy 101 at San Luis Opisbo

Hope you have a great time !!!!

fastduo

Thank you very much. Can you all recommend any good place to eat and sleep in SF, on PCH and in LA.
Are there any areas in LA to avoid?

semperfi65

Check out the following: http://www.rocky-point.com/

http://www.trattoriagrappolo.com/

http://www.emilios-restaurant.com/

We did the same trip three weeks ago. Do you plan on seeing Alcatraz?

fastduo

Thank you for the links. We do plan on Alcatraz....

fastduo

The trip was fantastic. Thanks for all of your tips. The Cali coast is very beautiful.

We flew into San Fransisco on Jet Blue-love the direct TV on Jet Blue, made the 6 hr flight go by very quickly. We stayed in an older hotel in the *** Hill area. We had a great time in San Fran. Rode the Cable cars and public transportation all over the area. Saw the honking sea lions down at Fishermanns Wharf. Did alot of sight seeing. Took the Alcatraz tour, rented bikes and rode the Golden Gate Bridge. It was tough for me as I am three months post knee surgery, but a real blast regardless. We took the ferry back. We stayed in SF for two full days. On day three, rented a convertable-a VW Beetle convertable from Avis. I thought that it was an iconic vehicle for a Cali road trip and it was actually a very fun little car-plus it got great gas mileage ~27 mpg average. I wanted the GT-H but it was a little out of our price range for 8 days!
We proceded to drive through the hills of San Fran for a little fun and then headed south into Monterey. We stayed overnight in Moterey. In the morning, we did the 17 mile Pebble Beach drive, and visited Carmel. we went to the Spanish Monestary in Carmel, and also went to the Monterey Aquarium. We continued south and stopped at Big Sir and did some hiking. We then continued on to Morro Bay for the night. This is the really twisty part of the PCH we did at night. It was awsome. I was working that Tip-tronic VW tranny hard. Both my wife and I are road racers and she even made a comment that it was like being in an enduro-it went on for ever. I had an absoule blast driving this section.
In the morning, we back-tracked to San Simeon and went on the Hurst Castle tour. What a place! I was unaware of the significance of the Hurst family ie: owning ESPN etc.....We then continued south and stopped at Pismo Beach and walked the pier. We watched the surfers for a while, the waves were pretty big as there was alot of wind. We then went up to the dunes and watched the four wheelers for a while. I wanted to take the Bettle and turn it into a "Dune Buggy" but I don't think Avis would have appreciated that much. We then continued on to Santa Barbara and stayed at The Franciscan Inn. It was a very nice small motel a block from the beach. We went that evening to a neighborhood restaurant called The Brew House http://www.santabarbara.com/Dining/r...restaurant=609 and had a very nice dinner and had some great converstion. Everyone there was very friendly and the owner of of the restaurant even came over to talk to us and offered to buy us dessert to thank us for coming to her restaurant. I highly recommend this little neighborhood establishment. I am not a beer drinker but they make their own beer there and everyone seemed to love it. Being from Miami, I ordered a Mojito and it was great. We noticed that everyone had their dogs out with them and we thought that was pretty cool.
As we went back to out room, we stopped by the office to get some brochures for the area and I noticed more dogs. Nice, well behaved dogs. Come to find out, Big Dog Clothing company is headquartered in Santa Barbara and the following day was their 14th annual Big Dog Parade and party on State Street. A very BIG DEAL in Santa Barbara! We thought, we know what we are doing in the morning. So we went to the parade, watched over 1200 dogs march down main street all dressed in different costumes, some way more creative than one could imagine. There were alot of dogs, I mean alot. Everyone watching the parade brought their dogs too. We went to The Big Dog Store and raked in some new clothes on the cheap as they were practically giving away the stuff. Too bad I didn't have my two dogs as they would have enjoyed the party as much as we did. The parade ended up on the water front with a live band and prizes for the best dressed and so on. As animal lovers, this was a real treat for us. Santa Barbara was a very beautiful place. We then continued on, passed through Malibu area and finally ended up in Santa Monica. We stayed there for three days and played the sight see'er along with all the other million or so people that crowded the area. We rented bikes and rode our little A@@'s off and visited Venice beach, aka Freakshow beach, muscle beach and all the little attractions in the area. Kinda felt a little like South Beach here at home in Miami but, no offence, South Beach is ALOT cleaner than Santa Monica. We drove all around LA, Hollywood, did the walk of fame, the Chinese theatre and the rest of the touristy stuff over the next few days. We then drove down toward Long Beach and went to Huntington Beach and checked out the pier and the beaches and the prominade. Then we left on Jet Blue for the red eye back to Ft. Lauderdale.
All and all, it was a fantastic trip. We looked at it as a reconisance mission for a future trip. We know we would spend more time in San Fran and less in Santa Monica and more time at places in between.
I thank you for all of your input. Your tips really came in handy and were actually added into our road map.
I will post up pictures as soon as my lovely wife gets them organized.
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