Pacific Coast Roadtrip: San Francisco to Portland

Advice on how to get the most out of your travels!

Couple
Winter 2014

Objectives

Experience the dramatic coastline
Wake up to nature
Explore small towns

$750- $1,250
5 days/4 nights

Trip Cost Details

Transportation	$82
Accommodations	$848
Food and Beverage	$215
Activities	$40
Total	$1,185

This holiday season, my husband and I wanted to spend Christmas with my brother’s family in Portland, Oregon. We decided to take the full week of Christmas off of work so that we could use this trip as an opportunity to drive up the Pacific coast from San Francisco to Oregon. While trying to plan our trip, I found a dearth of helpful blog posts on the topic. Many covered the coastal portion from San Francisco to Los Angelas but few touched upon the journey north. I hope this post is helpful to others looking to make the journey. Note that this post will be organized slightly differently than my typical trip reports, rather than breaking the post into categories of expenditures, it will be organized chronologically.

Click on the links below to navigate to posts describing a specific day of the journey.

Day 1: San Francisco to Sonoma
Day 2: Sonoma to the Redwoods
Day 3: Redwoods to Oregon
Day 4: Southern to Central Oregon
Day 5: Central Oregon to Portland/General Notes/ Words of Precaution

My strategy for this journey was to limit the daily driving to less than 3.5 hours. That way we could wake up at a decent hour, take a leisurely lunch, stop at impromptu vista points and still fit in the driving during daylight. I also wanted to maintain a bit of spontaneity and flexibility (to the extent that I am capable of that) so I only booked the last two nights (Oregon locations) in advance. We reserved the two California overnights on site.

Day 1: San Francisco to Sonoma

All packed up and ready to go, we gathered our car snacks and made our way over the Golden Gate bridge towards our entry onto Highway 1 near Point Reyes National Seashore.

Off we go!

Point Reyes National Seashore

A stop I absolutely wanted to make was to follow the Earthquake Trail, part of the Point Reyes National Seashore. This short nature walk traverses a portion of the San Andreas fault that ruptured during the 1906 earthquake. During the walk you can even see a fence that was split and separated by 16 feet during the quake. The trail also offers educational placards on earthquakes and plate tectonics in general.

San Andreas up close

After our walk down California’s seismic past, we made our favorite Point Reyes Station pit stop at Cowgirl Creamery to embrace our dairy filled future. Personal favorites include Wagon Wheel and Red Hawk cheeses. We continued north from Point Reyes Station not sure how far up Highway 1 we would go.

Mandatory cheese stop

Remember, I kept the first two nights accommodations “up in the air”. Unfortunately for us, the “air” was not very accommodating and as rain began to fall harder and harder we knew we needed to stop. At a particularly rough spot, I looked on my phone for the closest hotel and I found the Sea Ranch Lodge, yelp indicated this lodging would not be cheap but I thought hey, let’s see what we can get, otherwise we will just drive north to Gualala where there appeared to be several cheaper motel options.

I never knew negotiating hotel rates could be so much fun! As I chatted with the hotel staffer we each had our own position: I knew he was unlikely to get any other guests that late in the evening to fill his room and he knew I didn’t particularly want to drive another 30 minutes up the coast. After a fun round of negotiation, we ended up with a King room with window seat and fireplace for 20% off the going rate, and a bottle of house Cabernet Sauvignon.

The Sea Ranch Lodge is part of the famous 10-mile long coastal Sea Ranch community, know for it’s unique architecture and careful planning.

Our complimentary bottle of Cab set us up nicely for what was to be one of our best meals of the trip, dinner at the Lodge’s Black Point Grill. The dinner was outstanding, we shared several small plates, the winner being a mushroom appetizer bursting with fresh ‘shrooms, foraged that morning by the chef himself!