OT Travel Experts - Pacific Coast Highway vacation

Have done the trip the opposite direction (i.e., south to north). My advice is to stay in Carmel rather than Monterey, and Santa Barbara rather than L.A. Either way, awesome experience.

I would get over to the PCH above Pacifica and make stops at Half Moon Bay/Princeton/Mavericks. I'd also skip spending the night in LA as already mentioned above.

An alternative trip would be to fly into Portland and drive down the Oregon coast, through the redwood forests and Napa Valley. Finish in SF and fly home from there.

This alternative would avoid a lot of traffic and be very scenic, as well.

That is an awesome drive. Stop at the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz and also stop and enjoy the beach in Malibu.

I'd love to tag along with you on this trip. Any of the other suggestions are good, and I, too, would stay out of LA.
I'd consider this (for something other than what has been listed)
day 1: SF
day 2: Monterey, Big Sur, Carmel
day 3: continue driving down PCH as far as you can.
Fly out of Fresno, or other central California airport

Before the lay off, I had to sometimes fly into L.A. to get to Bakersfield. Frick L.A. Unless you are staying there for awhile, the traffic is terrible. Always, always, terrible and none of those people know how to drive. I would suggest flying into San Fransisco and doing a day there, going to The Winchester House in San Jose, then heading to Carmel. Monetary is nice (I did some kelp dives there) but nothing special. Morro Bay is cool. It is were Birds by Alfred Hitchcock was spent and like a West Coast Grand Island. The cool thing is that you can watch the sea lions in the water. Hearst Castle is really awesome and not to far from the coast. Paso Robles has nice wineries and Santa Barbara is a scenic city. Los Angeles is cool and has a lot of neat stuff to do but it takes so long to get anywhere. LAX has to be the one of the worst airports. If you can do San Fransisco to San Diego, it will be a much better trip. San Diego is nice and the airport is quick to get in and out of.

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I'm thinking about taking the wife (no pics) for a 3 day trip down the PCH over MLK weekend.

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My rough plan at the moment is to fly into SFO around 10:30am from Atlanta

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Slaves can fly these days?

I did this years ago. My sister lived in SF so we drove out there from NOLA which took a week or more. We stopped at all the National Parks along the way there (and back.) After a week in SF, we drove down PCH to Los Angeles.

The one touristy thing that I wanted to do but didn't have time for was to go to Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

It was a beautiful trip.