Pacific Coast Highway, Southern California

One of my goals was to drive the entirety of the Pacific Coast from San Diego, CA to Neah Bay, WA. My family had driven the central and northern coast of California, and the Oregon Coast, in 2022. I wanted to complete the California portion in 2023 and decided to drive from San Diego to San Francisco. The first part of the trip was spent visiting Sea World and the USS Midway in San Diego, then driving up to Los Angeles to spend a couple days at Disney Land and California Adventures. After LA we started driving north along the Pacific Coast until we reached San Francisco. From San Francisco we decided to take the train back up to Seattle. It was a whirlwind vacation with so much packed in that by the time we got home we felt like we’d been gone for a month, not a week and a half.

When you do a quick road trip with a bunch of activities, you get to see a ton of different stuff, but often you don’t have time to explore. I would love to come back to San Diego and spend a week or two because it seems like an amazing place, but we didn’t really get a chance since we were only there 2 days. We decided to spend one day at Sea World, and the other day visiting the aircraft carrier USS Midway.

At Sea World we went to a couple of the shows, but my favorite part was getting to see, and learn about, the walrus they are rehabilitating at the center. Although getting a kiss from a Beluga was…something.

The other activity we planned for San Diego was to visit the USS Midway. The USS Midway was commissioned just after WWII ended and was decommissioned in 1992, it was turned into a museum in 2004. My son was really excited to see it, the movie Top Gun: Maverick had come out earlier that year and he was really into planes and boats, and we had made a model of an aircraft carrier, so when he found out we could actually walk on one, we had to do it. It was really interesting, we toured pretty much the whole ship and even got to climb up to the bridge.

We spent the next two days at Disneyland and California Adventures. I hadn’t heard of California Adventures, but it’s just Disneyland Part II. You still have to buy separate tickets though, but they have some fun rides that showcase some of the more recent Disney movies and franchises like Cars and The Avengers. They also have a ride that I would highly recommend, Soarin’ Around the World,

After a couple days in L.A. we headed north along the coast. We didn’t really have any set plans, we just played it by ear and drove until we felt like stopping. I don’t remember the names of any of the beaches we stopped at, but there were tons of beautiful places to just stop. When the kids got tired of driving, or if they saw a nice beach they wanted to explore, we stopped. They would play until they were ready to keep driving, and when it started getting dark we’d stop for the night. Two highlights though were the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal rookery. It was great to get some nice scenery and get out of the cities after a week in San Diego and L.A.. Once we got to San Francisco, we all hopped on a train rode it back to Seattle.

Previous
Previous

Pacific Coast Highway (Central California)

Next
Next

Waterfall Alley & the Historic Columbia River Highway, Oregon