LA to San Diego to Seattle January

[cgansbauer]

Hi everyone!
My friend and I are going to be taking a road trip up the West Coast for our college's winter break. We live in Los Angeles. My friend wants to transfer to a college in San Diego and I'd like to transfer to a college in Seattle or Portland. So we'd like to visit those 3 cities. I would also like to visit some of the great nature Northern California has to offer. This is our first time planning a road trip - any trip advice would be appreciated (attractions to see, road routes to take, etc.) The idea was to start off by going to San Diego, then heading up the coast to Seattle. My two worries are time and weather. The tentative dates are from Jan 7 - 16th. Is this enough time? The idea of driving 6 hours a day is unappealing to us both. I have also never driven in snow. Would we need snow chains for parts of our route?

Thanks!

[noFanofCB]

Some quick calculations-
LA <-> SD - 120 each way. Daytrip?

Leaves 8 days.

LA <-> Seattle is 1150 mi (per Google shortest route) X 2 = 2300 mi driving there and back.
At 500 mi/day you have about 5 days of driving to do in your 8 available days. (never mind that 6 hour limit idea)

Seems doable if the visits are a single day and there's a little bit of margin for weather or traffic.

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

I think you're a little short on time for a trip of this scale - assuming that you're planning to drive back to LA at the end of it.

Just from LA to Seattle, you're looking at 2 hard days of driving, each way - and that's driving up I-5 and driving 10-12 hours a day. If you only want to drive 6 hours a day or less, then you'd need a total of at least 8 just for the driving, and that's before you even work a stop in San Diego to the mix.

Weather is certainly a possibility, and chain restrictions can be in effect in Northern California/Oregon on I-5. Of course, if you have no experience driving in snow, you might be better off waiting for the conditions to improve.

If you want to go up the coast, and possibly explore the redwoods, that would generally keep you away from any snow. However, going that way also adds even more time to your trip.

So that gives you an idea of some of the potential challenges of what you've laid out. I'm sure you can come up with something that would be a great trip, but it sounds like you might want to scale things back and perhaps just focus on San Diego some of the great nature that's closer to Southern California than going all the way up in to Oregon/Washington.