Driving from Seattle to Los Angeles

[MrSquished]

Reading, Stockton and Bakersfield are must visit places in CA.

I wouldn't go to Bakersfied, CA again if you paid me to do it. In actual gold.

 

[BoomerD]

Yea exactly, five days isn't much time at all. I do the drive fairly regularly to LA and San Francisco and that's basically a day drive in itself, especially if you're taking the scenic route.

Yep. My grandkids still live in CA, between Fresno and Modesto. It's about 900 miles from here. I spend 2 days on I-5...and only stop for food, gas, motel (1 night) and, of course, to let the dogs pee about every 2-3 hours. With my FUBAR'D back and knees, that's about as long as I can "stand to sit" at one time anyway. Once upon a time, it was a straight shot...1 day, food and gas stops only...old age sucks.

 

[BoomerD]

I wouldn't go to Bakersfied, CA again if you paid me to do it. In actual gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5P6zdlPJ34

 

[MrSquished]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5P6zdlPJ34

Exactly. I wouldn't walk the streets of Bakersfield voluntarily ever again. The best thing about Bakersfield is there is an In n Out there. That's it.

 

[who?]

If you like a dry heat sauna Barstow will hit the spot.

 

[mistercrabby]

Wow!! That's one of the World's Most Beautiful Drives. Five Days?? We took two weeks and only went down as far as San Francisco. We could have easily Taken 2 Months!!

In five days you won't get much of seattle, portland or frisco. you will get lots of highway. Spend 5 in Washington. go back in a year and do oregon. then hit northern cal. the fourth year you can do so cal. or quit your job and do a month.

 

[Drako]

I wouldn't go to Bakersfied, CA again if you paid me to do it. In actual gold.

I wouldn't go to any of the cities that I listed. That was the point.

 

[cyclistca]

5 days, plan to do a lot of driving and not much sightseeing. We took two weeks to drive from Vancouver to San Francisco. The drive down the Oregon Coast is fantastic but it takes time.

 

[dainthomas]

Seattle to LA is about 17 hours in a straight shot. Add a day to shoot over to Cannon Beach from Portland, drive down to Florence then back over to I5. That'll get you some of the most scenic parts of the coast. Then another couple hours down I5 to head up to Crater Lake (another day)

Now here's a different idea: after circling Crater Lake, keep going east until you hit 139 and 395. Then take that all the way south past Reno and turn west at Mono Lake to head up to Yosemite (8 hour drive). That will bring you into Tuolumne and the upper part of the park, which is nearly as scenic with hardly any people. And you can still drop down and circle the valley if you want. That's your third extra day.

After that you head west again and down to LA.

Honestly though, you should spend a minimum of 2-3 day in Crater Lake or Yosemite. This short trip won't do either one justice.

 

[bigrash]

So I just got back from the trip, and I have to say, what an amazing experience that was!

Instead of driving all the way down, we decided to check out Mount Rainier, Palouse Falls (all the way in East Washington) and the Columbia River Gorge. So instead of the 1300 mile drive, I ended up driving over 2400 miles in 7 days.

We were disappointed that Big Sur was closed since we wanted to check out Julia Pfeiffer Burns Park. I also wanted to check out Crater Lake Park, but we didn't have the time to go there.

And I really wanted to see Shi Shi Beach, but after walking in the muddy trail for an hour, the wife and I gave up as it was getting dark and we'd have a hard time getting back. Had I known we could camp at the beach, I would have planned to stay there overnight instead

I also found a cool website called Roadtrippers where you can plan trips. You can check out my trip using this link (places with the green mountain icon I didn't have time to visit): https://roadtrippers.com/map?a2=t!1...ign=trip&utm_medium=share&utm_source=copy&z=4