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A friend and I are planning a road trip this May, a one way trip from San Antonio Texas to Portland Oregon and are looking for some advice on great places to stop along the way. We have given ourselves 2 weeks to complete the trip, and would love to stop at Yosemite along the way. We've never planned a road trip before, so any and all suggestions are appreciated.
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Your basic routing and the amount of time that you can devote to it allow you to combine the best of two justifiably popular RoadTrips: the great Southwest national parks and the Pacific coast.
The first part of your trip s basically just I-10 westward, at least as far as Arizona, but that gives you access to Carlsbad Caverns National Park (NP), Guadalupe Mountains NP, Tombstone, Kartchner Caverns State Park, Saguaro NP, and Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Taking I-17 north from Phoenix would also let you take a detour through Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon up to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. From there, you'd take I-40 west into California and CA-58/CA-99/CA-41 up to Yosemite.
Next up would be the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH, CA-1/US-101) north to Portland. From Yosemite, CA-120/I-205/I-580 would put you in the Bay Area and let you start your coastal drive at Point Reyes National Seashore,although you could aim to hit the coast farther north if you like. Then working your way northward along the coast, you could visit Mendocino, Redwood National Park, any number of state parks in both California and Oregon, and even Fort Clatsop in Astoria before finishing up in Portland.
Note also that, depending on how many national parks you decide to visit, it may very well be cost effective to buy an annual pass.
AZBuck