Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

First, before you rent your car from the airport location, check around to see where else in town you can rent from. There is absolutely no reason to pay all the extra fees and taxes that are tacked on to airport rental locations if you don't have to. As a case in point, my wife and I are doing a fly/drive trip later this month, and we are saving over $100 by renting our car from an off-airport location. Yes we will have to pay about $20 for the cab ride to get to the car, but we still save quite a bit. In your case an off-airport rental franchise might be even more convenient.

On your drive down the coast to San Francisco, there will be no shortage of great ocean side parks and trails to take advantage of. I would suggest that you look at both the Oregon and California state park websites to see what's available in addition to Redwood National Park. (actually some of the best redwood groves are in Del Norte Coast and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Parks. Multiple stops during the day also helps to break up the driving into manageable chunks and, counter-intuitively, actually lets you get farther down the road on some days. Generally, you should be looking to spend your two nights on the coast around Gold Beach and Fort Bragg. That would make your third day a little shorter mileage-wise, and either let you get into San Francisco before rush hour or give you some extra time to deal with it. On the way back, a good half-way stopping point would be Yreka CA.

AZBuck