Help!!! Quick advice needed west coast road trip...

[fishern]

Hi All... My wife and I had our flights cancelled from San Francisco to the UK earlier this week thanks to the volcano. We have been able to rebook for a flight back home on this coming Sunday evening but departing from Seattle.

We've hired a car and are preparing to travel up the coast but have no idea what to visit on route given we've not planned for this (we're English so don't really know our way around this great part of the world!).

We'd like to visit some National Parks with stunning scenery, and perhaps some welcoming small towns and maybe even some off-the-beaten-track sights.

We'd really appreciate some ideas with weblinks if possible as we plan to leave tomorrow afternoon and take 3-4 days therefore covering around 300 miles a day, this should give us plenty of time to get to see a few places on the way up.

Any ideas on decent places to stay on the way up will also be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

[scosm]

Glad to hear your flight got rescheduled. I have been doing research for my own road trip and come across many great threads about west coast sites. Here is an example of one.

I have done a little driving out there and I couldn't overstate enough how amazing the redwoods are. Some of the redwoods places you could check out are the "Avenue of the Giants," Nelson B. Drury Scenic Highway, Humboldt Forest, the Redwood National Forest and Jedediah Smith State Parks, particularly the drive on Howland Hills Road. The coastline north of the redwoods into Southern Oregon is stunning.

More inland there are places like Crater Lake National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Hood, Olympic National Park and other places. Taking Interstate 5 will be much faster that US 101 or CA 1 that go close to or along the coast. There are really too many places to choose from so don't try to pack too much in or think you will make great speed in your driving. Don't forget Portland and Seattle too, great cities.