Fear the Crab

Maile and I, along with my mother-in-law and her boyfriend, planned a road trip through parts of central and southern California. This would be thus far the longest vacation I’ve ever had away from home, as well as the most extensive; over 5 cities across a span of 2 weeks. I had never been to many of the locations on our itinerary, or hadn’t visited there in over 2 decades.

We has originally planned a south-to-north vacation that would start in San Diego and journey up along the CA-1 coastal highway to San Francisco, but a vote to skip Los Angeles meant we’d have to spend over 10 hours driving to the next destination. Coupled with the cost of a rental minivan dropped off at a different airport, the plan changed to a round-trip starting and ending in San Jose.

Parts of this trip would be improvised, meaning we would not have reservations at motels beyond the initial night’s arrival. This was intended to give us greater flexibility in driving around, such as if we under-estimated time and distance, or discovered an interesting place to visit and spend some time. Instead we’d only have a basic idea of where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do, and gradually this boiled down to the route: San Jose > Monterey > Solvang > Gilroy (via US-101) > San Francisco > San Jose.

Normally I loathe the lack of preparedness, but trusted everybody’s opinions that we’d easily find someplace to sleep. And since we intended to stay in motels costing less than $100/night, there would be a lot of places to choose from. Right? Yeah, basically I was out-voted and agreed to “just wing it.”

I still insisted on a few prior arrangements, however. First and foremost was our first night’s stay upon arrival. Our flight would land in SJC late at 2100, and combined with the time needed to secure our baggage and the rental van, meant we’d have to hunt around for a place to sleep in the dead of night. Night-driving in a strange location is not the best way to start a vacation, and we made reservations at the Best Western Airport Plaza, practically 10 minutes away.

Additionally, one of the sites we wanted to visit was the Hearst Castle state park, and I had learned that it was recommended we reserve our tickets. Since there was a long drive along the PCH to the remote location, the park tour was one we had to plan for in advance. I also wanted to catch a Major League Baseball game and while my team wasn’t in town during our stay, I managed to secure tickets for a Giants game versus Milwaukee on Sunday September 19th, for ourselves and friends and family who lived in San Francisco.

Between Sunday 9/12 and Friday 9/24, we accumulated approximately 1095 miles between all significant stops. That doesn’t include the 140 miles of Caltrain and BART rides within the San Francisco county, nor the commutes to all the interesting sites and tourist traps to be found throughout California. Following this post will be a day-by-day account of our travels through the 31st state (updated as I get to them, naturally).