Page 44 - 2017 Travel Guide to California

ROAD TRIPS
MUIR WOODS NATIONAL
Monument, below; the
Golden Gate Bridge, right;
Switzer Falls Trail, Los
Angeles, opposite top; San
Diego harbor and skyline,
opposite bottom.
and other cinematic cowboys who filmed
Westerns in the nearby Alabama Hills.
A few tips: Springtime, when the Sierra
is still clad in snow, is the prettiest time for
the drive, although some side trips may be
limited. For an overnight stop, the town of
Bishop offers the largest selection of motels
and restaurants.
Day Trips
You don’t have to spend days or weeks on
the highway to see the best of California.
Within easy reach of major cities are exqui-
site road trips you can do in less than a day.
San Francisco
Head north, across the Golden Gate Bridge,
to sample some of Northern California’s
most bucolic scenery. Almost within sight
of San Francisco’s skyscrapers you’ll come
to Muir Woods National Monument, a
cathedral-like preserve of old-growth red-
woods at the foot of Mount Tamalpais.
Follow Highway 1 to Point Reyes National
Seashore, where you might catch tule elk
grazing on misty hillsides above the wave-
battered coast. West Marin County, with its
organic farms, artisanal bakeries and
gourmet cheesemakers, is the breadbasket
for San Francisco’s foodie culture. Stop for
lunch at the Hog Island Oyster Farm, where
you can munch on bivalve mollusks pulled
straight from Tomales Bay. The long,
narrow bay, incidentally, is a submerged
section of the notorious San Andreas Fault.
Farther north on Highway 1 you’ll come to
Bodega Bay, a sleepy fishing village where
Alfred Hitchcock unleashed avian terror in
The Birds. The Tides restaurant, where ter-
rified townspeople took shelter, is still
there, although hardly recognizable in its
current form. A few miles inland, in the
separate town of Bodega, you can find the
familiar schoolhouse and church from the
movie. Continue on to Sebastopol,
renowned for its juicy Gravenstein apples
and an outpost of Sonoma County’s wine
country. Turn south on Highway 101 and
head back to San Francisco, stopping for a
celebratory cocktail in Sausalito, with the
lights of the city twinkling across the bay.
Los Angeles
On a day trip along the Angeles Crest Scenic
Byway you’re more likely to spot a bighorn
sheep than a Kardashian. As you wind up
and over narrow ridgetops in the San
Gabriel Mountains, above the smog, your
vistas range from the vast, chocolate-brown
Mojave Desert to Catalina Island. Also
known as State Highway 2, the 66-mile-long
Angeles Crest Scenic Byway was built 100
years ago to be “the most scenic and pictur-
42 2017 T R AV E L G U I D E TO C A L I F O R N I A