Where Do You Want To Go Today -- Road Trip travel planning Q&A (Part 1)

Q1:
Hello Jamie;

I heard that you answer questions about road trips....

I was wondering if you know where I can find someone to drive with me (in my car with my dog) from the east coast to the west coast in the summer?

Thanks so much

Miss J

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A1:


Hi Miss J --

Ride sharing is a great way to cut costs and maybe get some extra shut-eye on a long road trip. I used to see rides offered/wanted in the back pages of local newspapers (back when there still were local newspapers...!). Also, there are often "Ride Boards" in university libraries or student unions.

One other good source of contacts is Craigslist, like this listing from the Boston area.

To be safe, make sure you check references from your potential travel companions -- obvious, perhaps, but better safe than sorry.

Happy Trails, and hope this helps!


-- Jamie Jensen

roadtripusa@hotmail.com

Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America's Two Lane Highways

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Q2
April Road Trip along the Pacific Coast -- SF to LA


Hi Jamie !

It's been 12 years (ish) since I first bought your book, with a plan to drive cross-country in the year after I graduated college. I finished college dirt-poor, and moved back to England, where I'm originally from, but refused to throw away your book! My sister and I have been planning our week long road trip along the California coast for months now, but I've only just read your blog, with your offer of free advice, awesome!

We are trying to decide if it's worth driving north of San Francisco on Sunday night or Monday morning to see Mendocino/Anderson Valley/Point Arena/Gualala or take an extra day to spend around Big Sur.
The rest of the trip we'll be loosely following your California coastal trip, but not knowing the area at all, I'm not too sure which places are "worth it" and which will take a half-day, or a whole day.

Here are the details: (last week of April 2009)
Two days in San Francisco
Mon-Fri down the coast
weekend in LA

We're looking to get in a mix of nice towns, hiking/beach, and any "fun & memorable" type places. I'm a photographer, so really want to get some great shots on our trip (anything- scenic, quirky, cool, whatever!) We're not too bothered about our accomodation, we're bringing a tent & sleeping bags, happy to camp/hostel or hotel if it's worth the money. We're up for fitting a lot in one day, I've got four kids, so I'm used to getting up early, and staying up late.


Love your book, love your website, they are both awesome!

Sincerely, AH


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A2:

Hello AH –

Thanks for very much for your email – and for keeping Road Trip USA on your mind all these years.

The California coast is a great place to travel (I’m an LA boy, so I may be partisan, but there aren’t many prettier or more enjoyable places to spend your vacation time).

It seems to me you have 4 or 5 days to do the trip – which should be plenty, but I don’t think it really leaves you with enough time to add-on a trip north to Mendocino (which is also gorgeous, but a good 3-4 hours away, each way, from San Francisco.

You say you have 4 kids, but didn’t say whether they will be joining you – I’ll assume you’re planning a “girls’ road trip” with your sister, but if the kids are coming along it just means you’ll probably have to stop even more often.

I’ll try to do a day-by-day highlights to help you outline the journey – and if you get a chance to pick up a copy of my ** brand-new Pacific Coast Highway ** book, there is a lot of new and improved information in it that should help you have even more fun along the way—all for around $10, way less than the cost of cheeseburger at the Fog City Diner.

:-)

Here's a suggested itinerary:
Day One: Santa Cruz
You say you like quirky, cool, whatever – well, there’s no place more quirky, cool, whatever than Santa Cruz, a good first night stop from SF. There’s the one-of-a-kind Mystery Spot, a lively surfer / skate scene, pretty good food, quaint older motels (I like the "Seaway Inn"), and the West Coast’s last great historic beachfront roller coaster.

On the way, be sure to take it slow along the San Mateo coast – stop to see the giant elephant seals at lovely Ano Nuevo reserve, and check out the photogenic lighthouse at Pigeon Point (which is also a HI youth hostel, with a clifftop hot tub! – but often booked up a long time in advance.

Day Two: Monterey
No matter what you’ve heard about the Gold Rush, this is where California was born – capital of the West Coast during Spanish colonial era, Monterey is a living history lesson with great views out over the Pacific Ocean. The main event is the internationally famous Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The ultra-ritzy art galleries and golf courses of neighboring Carmel aren;t really my "cup of tea", but the beaches there are beautiful, and there are plenty of remnants of the days when Robert Louis Stevenson, Robinson Jeffers, John Steinbeck and other creative types called Monterey home.

My favorite place to stay is the wonderfully rustic, state-run resort at Asilomar, at the very tip of the Monterey Peninsula.


Day Three: Big Sur
Make sure you get out of the car and take a hike (or three or four!) away from the road – Big Sur is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, with dense redwood groves, crashing surf, enormous quantities of wildlife and just about anything you could ask of Mother Nature.

A word of warning – avoid contact with Poison Oak, which is everywhere along the trails

For a place to stay, try the state park lodge – kindof a 1960s throwback, but better value than the generally pricey inns elsewhere in Big Sur. Or if you want a real change of pace, consider staying the night at the New Camoldoli retreat, a silent Catholic hermitage with overnight accommodations.

Day Four: Hearst Castle & Solvang
The southern half of Big Sur is a fantastic drive, but there isn’t as much to stop and see as there is further north. Keep an eye out for hang-gliders launching from up in the mountains, and for yet more Elephant Seals on the shores at Piedras Blancas, near San Simeon. The main stop today should be Hearst Castle – the Xanadu of "Citizen Kane" fame, and an unforgettable sight to see.

Overnight at the over-the-top Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, or at the ersatz Danish kitsch capital, Solvang, just down the road from Michael Jackson’s ”Neverland” ranch should prepare you for entry deeper into Southern California.

One last stop: Mission Santa Barbara, a very historic location that’s also one of the prettiest places in the Golden State. And be sure to follow PCH along the coast thru Malibu – most of the traffic will feed onto the US-101 freeway, so be sure to follow Hwy-1 thru Oxnard to stay within sight of the Pacific.

Have fun!


-- Jamie Jensen

roadtripusa@hotmail.com

Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America's Two Lane Highways

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Keep those cards and letters comin'

:-)

Road Trip USA in the News

In the years since I finished the first edition of Road Trip USA, the world has in many ways changed beyond imagination. Back in 1996, with my new book in hand, I traveled all over the country, visiting bookstores, shamelessly accosting newspaper editors and radio producers, and basically doing whatever it took to try to get some attention for my newborn mega magnum opus.

Thanks to an technophile publisher, in the early 1990s, before the book first came out, we also managed to create a community of road trip aficianados in the then-brave new world of “Gopherspace” and hyper-links, which has since evolved into the cyberspatial (and significantly more commercial) Internet and World Wide Web we all know and love (and where we all spend too much time, imho).

Way back at the end of the last century (and still true today!), the best I could hope for was to get an invitation from a reader for a guided tour of some small town sight I might otherwise have missed. Readers also wrote to me with suggestions of great roads, great pie-and-coffee diners, along with offering me invaluable fact corrections and general fine-tuning of my sense of local history. All of which have been gratefully received and duly noted, helping me to improve Road Trip USA with each successive edition.

To try to recreate the generous spirit of the early “Road Trip USA,” I’m working on establishing a zone here on the roadtripusa.com site where we can share “Trip Tips” and suggestions – starting with some of my recommended itineraries and road stops for readers who have written in to me in the past few weeks.

So please stay tuned!

And I also want to keep communications open with the many websites and travel “bloggers” (people much more cyber-sophisticated than I am), so I will be swapping links with people who have been spreading the word about two-lane highways, road trips and Road Trip USA.

Like these:

From my hometown, Davis California:

A book to buy before booking a road trip
By Wendy Weitzel

The fifth edition of Davis author Jamie Jensen's book "Road Trip USA"
officially launches May 1, but is already available in stores and
online. And with the sluggish economy, the timing couldn't be better.

If you haven't experienced Jensen's way of travel, I highly recommend
it. My family used his books' guidance for several trips in the West,
and may again this summer if we embark on a cross-country adventure…

His Web site, http://roadtripusa.com dishes out advice, "mainly to
try to encourage people to cheer up, hit the road, and enjoy the
USA."

Thank you Wendy, and "Happy Trails" to you and your family!

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Last week, I also had a conversation with JD Rinne at Budget Travel magazine, "The World's Most Useful, $1-a-copy Travel Magazine," which also runs a very informative, wide-ranging website. Their Road Trip of the Month features a 4-day tour of the Blue Ridge Parkway -- check it out.

Budget Travel also has a nice Q&A with me, in which we covered quite a lot of ground.

(From Carhenge to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan... and more.)

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more to come, I promise.

Hit The Road!


It’s been an eventful year since I last had much to say here, so to counteract all the recent economic gloom-and-doom I’ve got some good news: the newest, latest and most up-to-datest edition of Road Trip USA is on its way to a bookshelf near you. Fully updated and finely-tuned suggestions of what to see do and enjoy along more than 35,000 miles of all-American (and a wee bit Canadian, too) highways are there, alongside the usual trusty maps, brilliant photos and oddball marginalia.

The roadtripusa.com website will be updated (soon), too.

So, with gas prices dropping back below the crazy heights they reached last year, baseball season getting underway and scents of springtime in the air, maybe it’s time to take a break from the downturn, get out on the road and remember what it feels like to have FUN.

To celebrate the launch of the new – 5th! – edition, I’ll be joining with a select dozen or so other blogs and web-writers out there, to share some of the pleasures and excitement of off-the Interstate road trip travel.

And to show off the huge diversity of detailed information contained in Road Trip USA, I’d also like to make the special offer of genuinely FREE personalized travel-planning advice to interested readers—tell me where and when you think you want to go, what you like to do and other salient details, and I’ll do an ad-hoc equivalent of those old Auto Club "TripTiks“, and suggest all sorts of possibilities for on-the-road fun.

I’m sure other roadtripusa.com readers will want to offer their suggestions as well, so please drop me a line at the email address below, and let’s get going.

Along with the ~ 900-page "big book“, I’ve also put together a pair of smaller guides to certain very special roads: The Pacific Coast Highway, and of course, Route 66. These are out now, so let me know what you think!

(Next up: GPS-friendly versions, once someone shows me how to upload coordinates and data points and all the other wonderful stuff I’ve been collecting these past 20-odd years...)

For now, enjoy the new books, and Happy Trails,


Jamie Jensen

Here is where to find me, complete with lame-looking but apparently essential spam-busting effort, @ :

RoadTripUSA (AT) hotmail.com