Flying into PDX on 3/26 and need to be in Santa Barbara on 4/5. I’d like to see Crater Lake. Any other suggestions? We’ve been to SF but will stop to see friends for a night.
Make sure you have chains (or approved traction tires).
In Sept, we did the southern half of that drive. Please take time to drive the coastal route, especially Big Sur. Gorgeous.
We love to meander and have done the trip a few times. The Crater Lake area will have 10 feet of snow and the rim drive will be closed. Plan and dress accordingly.
It would require a bit of extra driving, but the Oregon sand dunes are really nice.
Redwoods National Park is another really interesting stop. We usually see elk.
The coast between SF and SB is dotted with neat little towns. If you know surfing at all you can stop at Pillar Point and look at the big wave surfers out at Mavericks, then head into Half Moon Bay for a meal. If you prefer inland, taking a loop through Yosemite/King Canyon/Sequoia is well worth the miles.
Another kind of on the way thing we found interesting was the tour of Hearst Castle.
Thanks. Will Yosemite be open or snowed in? Bummer about Crater Lake.
Yosemite valley will likely be open but chains could be required. It all depends. Today, given the blizzard in the Sierra, the roads into the park are closed. The same holds for Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park. Check the forecast before you go. Both are national treasures and must-sees for a visit to California if you can get there.
Big Sur is always open, barring mudslides. Again check the CalTrans website. Depending on your budget, the Post Ranch Inn and Ventana are beautiful places to stay. Monterey’s aquarium is second to none. Monterey’s old town is historic and interesting and one can take a bicycle ride on a dedicated bike path for miles down the coast. Carmel has a lovely mission and nice art galleries to stroll through.
I second a visit to Hearst’s Castle. It is absolutely beautiful and in a breath taking setting overlooking the ocean. You could easily spend a whole day there, take two of the tours.
Just down the road from Hearst’s Castle is a beach where elephant seals in huge numbers lie on the sand. It’s very interesting to watch them.
Cambria is a good place to stay. There are a lot of inns on Moonstone Beach.
Further down the coast, if you are interested in California’s missions, there is a state park near Lompoc that depicts mission life in the early 1800’s. Lompoc also has flower fields that may be in bloom in early April. Solvang is cute but too touristy for my tastes. A little bit of Denmark in California.
You can still go to Crater Lake. Just not around it. There is not much to do up there.
Yosemite has a lot of altitude. The valley floor should be melted out by then. The higher roads will still be closed. You will need to check close to the date and be flexible.
Low altitude areas like Napa/Sonoma and the Central Coast are almost guaranteed to be really nice that time of year. It should be bathing suit weather down in Avila Beach and SB.
Silver Falls near Silverton, Oregon is a nice stop. Silver Creek drops down a stair step geologic formation creating 10 separate falls. The park has some excellent hiking trails and for a couple of the larger falls the trail takes you under the rock overhang and behind the waterfall.
.https://oregonstateparks.org/index.cfm?do=parkPage.dsp_parkPage&parkId=151
Crater Lake is far from, well, pretty much everything, you won’t be able to drive around it, and there’s only a roughly 50% chance that you’ll be able to drive up the south entrance road and see it. I suggest choosing other areas to visit at the end of March, and planning a visit to Crater Lake for another time.
If it’s not stormy, the whole Oregon coast would be spectacular and not busy. Big Sur is always fantastic.
Interesting about Crater Lake. It’s on my bucket list but these dates are set so I guess it should stay on the list for another time.
If it’s on your bucket list - do it! You can drive to CL, stay at the nice hotel there overnight and get it off your list. Sounds like fun to me! Snow levels are so unpredictable these days but if it were on my must-see list, I’d go for it.
There’s a whole lot to see but if I were you I’d mix up the ocean and mountains and plan on skipping some sections of each so you don’t wear out driving - take a week to do the mountain roads from PDX through CL and down through Yosemite then drive out to the coast at Monterey and drive down to SB.
“You can drive to CL, stay at the nice hotel there overnight”.
Unfortunately not, the Crater Lake lodge only opens on May 17th. But you can drive to the Rim (once the shutdown is over) and on a clear day the views will be beautiful in the winter. Agree at that time of year the coast may be a pleasant drive if its not raining. But keep an eye on the desert wildflower bloom as well, which may well peak close to the week you are traveling. There’s the Antelope Valley poppy reserve (https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=627) and also Carrizo Plain (https://www.blm.gov/programs/national-conservation-lands/california/carrizo-plain-national-monument) which is a bit closer to Santa Barbara. Its been a very wet January so far, so it might well be a good wildflower season this year.
I’d suggest going to the Ashland Shakespeare festival. Opens early March - at least in the indoor theaters. I’ve seen some fabulous productions there.
Hearst Castle is a great stop and Cambria’s Moonstone beach has a number of excellent places to stay. If you are into wine tasting, head back from 1 along HWY 46 which will take you to Templeton / Paso Robles.
There is another cool national park you could visit, Lassen Volcanic National Park! Although I don’t know what the deal is with it during the government shutdown. But it’s a little-known national park that people don’t necessarily flock to.
Cambria, yes. We saw dolphins. Later, I’ll find the inexpensive place we stayed and the wonderful dinner spot across from the beach. Speaking of Paso Robles, great wine area. And Hearst Castle is another yes.
This whole area between Mendocino and toward SB is full of little stops. You can look up Nepenthe, for a look. We also drove up to the Hermitage near there. On top of a mountain.
Traveling with or without kids? How much time are you spending in Portland vs on the road? In the Portland area if you haven’t spent time there before you could do the drive up the Columbia river valley to Multnomah falls. There’s also Powell’s bookstore, Voodoo donuts ;-), and it is probably nearly the right time of year for the rhododendron garden near Reed and a bit too early for the rose garden.
I also second the Oregon Shakespeare festival in Ashland and / or driving through Redwood National Park in Northern California.
Closer to the Bay area but still north of it, the Russian River area is really pretty (more redwoods) and the wine regions are fun to visit if you are into wine. I especially like the town of Healdsburg in Sonoma but there are a lot of small towns in Napa and Sonoma to stay in. My husband and I had a getaway there last summer and went zip lining with Sonoma Canopy tours over the redwoods which was really fun if you like that sort of thing. If you are a beer drinker, stop at Lagunitas in Petaluma for their tour :-).
I think it would be easier if you decide on a route and look for spots along that route. I wouldn’t go from Portland to Yosemite to Cambria to Santa Barbara. It’s a lot of driving to crisscross the state.
We drove to Portland and back from Santa Barbara. On the way to Portland we stopped in San Francisco, next stop was camping at a state park on the far northern Ca coast. Went up and explored part of the Oregon coast and cut over to Portland. The way home we went along the Columbia River east to neat Mt Hood. Next we headed towards Bend Oregon and Crater lake. Stopped in Weed for a night just as a overnight stop. Next stop was Napa area and headed back to SB.
I’ve been to Crater lake twice once in winter and once in late June. Both times due to weather I didn’t see the lake.
I’d figure out what you want to see between Oregon and the Bay Area. Once you reach the Bay Area or Sacramento you can take two different routes to Santa Barbara. Coastal which could mean the 101 or Hwy 1. Hwy 1 will take longer. Or take the 5 and crossover in Paso Robles. From Paso Robles you can head over to Cambria easily. If you stay a few days in Cambria you can spend one day going up the coast towards Big Sur. We go to Cambria once or twice a year and it’s a pretty easy drive for the day to Ragged Point. If you go to Cambria don’t miss the elephant seals just a bit north of Cambria.
Edit- someone mentioned wildflowers. My favorite spot form wildflowers is Figueroa Mountain just outside of Los Olivos in the Santa Ynez valley. Very doable from Santa Barbara for the day.
also, if there were any big-ticket price items that usually don’t go on sale that you wanted to get, being in Oregon is the time to get it since they don’t have sales tax. (this doesn’t work for purchasing cars though…)
And any potion of hwy 1 between Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara be sure to check road status as you go. Depending on weather, past, current, and forecast, portions of the road could be closed. Wave as you go by, if you make it to the Cayucos/Morro bay area. A lovely drive…
There are a lot of cool things to see along that stretch, so I agree that you should settle on a route, then find the things along the route that interest you.
I did a roadtrip from San Francisco to Portland and back several years ago. On the way north, we visited the Humboldt Forest and the Oregon Coast, then on the way back south, we passed through Mt. Hood, Bend, Crater Lake, Klamath Falls and Mt. Shasta. The Oregon Coast is gorgeous. Every beachside town is so scenic and quaint, and they are more rocky and misty than the ones down in California. Though in the Spring, Big Sur will probably be pretty misty. Cape Perpetua in Oregon has some very cool tidal features.
You’ll want to take the coastal highway (101 or 1 or mixture of both) from SF to SB since the alternative Highway 5 is really boring. If you want to see more than just ocean the whole way down from Portland, then you could do mountains and waterfalls from Oregon to SF, then take the coast from SF to SB.