Chase and I went on one hell of a California road trip to see some of the National Parks, like Yosemite and Sequoia. Chase drove us 1,200 miles in seven days in one big circle starting/ending our trip in San Francisco. Our first and last road trip stops were: Point Reyes National Seashore and Napa Valley. Today I’m sharing our California road trip itinerary with you (about 27 hours of driving)!
We landed in San Francscio, took a 30 minute ride to Hayward to pick up our Escape Camepervan, stopped at a grocery store to stock up on food for the week and then we were off! First up Point Reyes, ending in Napa Valley for a little rest and relaxation.
Last March, Chase and I took our first van trip and drove around Utah and Arizona, visiting Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, Grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon, and Horseshoe Bend). Our full Utah & Arizona roadtrip itinerary can be found here!
A lot of people are starting to become more familiar with renting campervans (about the size of a conversion van) to travel around. It makes your dream road trip way more doable! The campervans comes with a bed, sink, camp stove, and fridge. This is our favorite way to visit the National Parks. We especially love not having to check in/out of hotels and can go at our own leisure.
California Road Trip National Park Itinerary
#1: Point Reyes National Seashore
The crazy thing about getting to Point Reyes is that it should have taken us a little bit over an hour to make it there, but the roads most of the way are through neighborhoods and are super narrow curvy, so it really took closer to three hours!
Be sure to put a specific address/destination into your GPS when visiting Point Reyes because it spans for MILES.
Sadly, we didn’t make it to the view point in Point Reyes, but we did stumble upon the cutest little surf town and made some sandwiches there after we walked on the beach for a little bit. We saw a little farmers market, children walking goats, and a ton of surfers leaving the ocean.
After driving for about 20 minutes, we finally made it to the little town in Point Reyes. It was really cute and I know we missed out on some good restaurants there, but we decided to leave and head to Ukiah, so we could set up camp before it got dark.
We made the two hour drive from Point Reyes to Montgomery Woods State Natural Reserve. We got there just in time to get situated and make some dinner before it got dark.
#2: Montgomery Woods State Natural Reserve
The Montgomery State Reserve is a hidden gem tucked far away from …. everyone. It’s like a little enchanted forest down off the beaten path where you’ll be surrounded by redwood trees, clear blue water in some spots, and the brightest green moss you’ll ever see. At one point, Montgomery Woods had the tallest redwood tree.
We started the two mile round trip hike in the early morning and finished around noon. We only saw a few people the entire time. The hard part about this trail was having to climb over fallen trees and it was hard to navigate the trail with so many fallen trees.
We started our five hour drive to Lake Tahoe around 1:00 p.m. We were in for a lot of snow aheads of us.
#3: El Dorado National Forest
El Dorado wasn’t part of our itinerary (love when that happens), but since we were driving through El Dorado National Forest, we thought it would be a nice place to camp, instead of driving the last 1.5 hours to Lake Tahoe. Well, there was a ton of snow, so there was no place to setup camp, so we had to nix that idea and drive the rest of the way.
Chase and I were both really happy that we drove through El Dorado National Forest because it was beautiful during sunset with the enormous pine trees surrounding us as we drove and watching them glow from the sun.
Omg, but hopping out of the car for pictures was almost unbearable because it was freeeeezing.
#4: Lake Tahoe
You will not believe how much snow was in Lake Tahoe. We were in complete SHOCK. At one point, if you looked out the car window either direction, it was walls of snow. That’s all you could see. It was such a wild experience. We are talking about 7-8 feet of snow…
By time we arrived to Lake Tahoe, we had driven for five hours, it was dark, and we were both HANGRY as could be… and I was in a state of panic on where we would sleep because it was impossible to park the van ANYWHERE due to the amount of snow.
I started calling around to hotels and most of them were booked and finally, one hotel had just two more vacant rooms. I remember sounding excited and relieved to the front desk on the phone and they must have noticed… because they upgraded us to the cutest, coziest room, right next to the fire pit outside – we even had a shoveled walk way out to the fire pit. We were on cloud nine over this.
We couldn’t hike in Lake Tahoe like we wanted to, so we hit the road to Yosemite, but I seriously cannot wait to come back to Lake Tahoe sometime…. in both winter and summer. Taking a boat out in the summer with friends sounds perfect and also being able to snow mobile through the pine trees sounds like an adventure I want to be on.
We left in the morning – four hours away from Yosemite.
#5: Yosemite
Yosemite was seriously unbelievable. We spent two days hiking in Yosemite and camped with our van at the cutest, most summery vibe campsite ever. It looked like it could be in a movie for summer camp!
As you drive into Yosemite National Park you will be overwhelmed by the views of the granite cliffs. There are a handful of areas to pull over and take in the views! It takes forever to get around Yosemite because it’s a loop, so you have to drive slowly around curvy roads until you reach the trail you want to hike.
The nice thing about Sequoia being our next stop was it was only 50 minutes.
#6: Sequoia National Park
Sequoia National Park has been on my travel list for way too long, so I was veryyy excited about being able to hike here…. that is… until we discovered there was five feet of snow there TOO. lol. A lot of the trails were closed, so we found one that was open and hiked for several miles on top of five feet of snow. I’m really sorry, but I don’t remember the name of the trail AT ALL.
We made friends that we kept running into at different National Parks (it was so crazy), so we ended up camping with them (we both had Escape Campervans) at a campsite in Sequoia.
Once we woke up, we made breakfast and headed back towards the coast to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway. It was a five hour drive.
#7: Pacific Coast Highway/Big Sur/Point Lobos
Everyone’s gotta drive up the Pacific Coast Highway at least once in their life! The sun glistened on the ocean for miles, the waves were huge, and there were seals in the distance. We could barely see them, but we could hear them loud and clear.
We weren’t sure where we were going at first and ended up driving to Big Sur, turning around and going to Point Lobos. There is a nice walking path with benches there. It costs $10.00 per vehicle to get into Point Lobos and no dogs are allowed at Point Lobos (not even in the car).
#8: Napa Valley
We still had about 72 hours to kill and spontaneously thought Napa Valley would be a great way to wind down from the trip. We stayed in downtown Napa Valley and there were so many good restaurants there! I really cannot wait to go back someday. It’s such a dreamy town, perfect for a couples get away or a girls weekend, whatever! I could not have imagined ending our California road trip anywhere else. I’ve been wanting to visit Napa Valley for years.
Here is our guide to Napa Valley!
Goodbye, Napa Valley
After two days in Napa Valley, it was time to sadly say goodbye to wine country. We had to be back in San Francisco by 10:00 a.m. to drop the van off and then we ate some Chinese food for lunch and waited to catch our red eye flight at 10:00 p.m. home.
Our California road trip was a lot different than our Utah/Arizona trip because everything was much more spaced out and snow was an extra factor that caught us by surprise. I think March can be hit or miss when it comes to snow, so it’s something to think about! You can view the current conditions on each of the parks specific page (like this).
If we were to do a California road trip again, we would probably stay longer at more places, which means visitng less next time. The distance in between (about 5 hours) was a lot to do every day (and it was mostly Chase drivviing)
I think I’d like our next road trip to be either Washington/Vancouver or around Oregon! Leave me a comment or send a tweet (@twoweekspaidvac) and let me know where your favorite road trip was!
