Pre-College Road Trip

socalmom23
Sat, 16 Nov 2013 13:55:28 +0000

I hope you come back, OP…

I think your trip sounds like a BLAST. When I was 18, I drove from L.A. to Minneapolis (and back) by myself, without a cell phone! My two-year-old Jeep broke down, I had to spend lots of extra $$, but I made it and everything worked out great.

If you are fortunate enough to convince your parents to let you go, a couple tips:

While in California, do not call it Cali out loud (likewise SoCal/NoCal) and if you plan on doing any beach camping (DO IT!) be sure to make reservations for CA state beaches. You must book them MONTHS in advance. For June dates, book starting December 1; July starting January 2; August starting February 1. Santa Barbara area beaches are the most desirable and usually the first to go. Refugio, El Capitan, Gaviota, Carpinteria (in that order) are the best, IMO. Ideally, you should have several people working the computers at once to nab your site. Probably a bit premature (since you may not go/don’t plan on beach camping), but we’ve run into so many visitors from OOS and abroad that have absolutely no idea how popular beach camping is and are shocked to find out that they have nowhere to stay that night! Just hoping to spare you from a potential snag (and, you can add this to your PP presentation to show your folks how carefully you’ve researched everything – tee hee).

Good luck!