Travel Thursdays: California Coast Road Trip: LA to San Fran Part 1

So last week Dave and I had a few days free and decided to take a spontaneous trip up the California coast. I usually like to plan trips ahead of time and look for specific places to stop and see or eat at. But this time we wanted to just wing it. One of our best friends was visiting us from Chicago and left on Monday, so we packed up along with her, dropped her off at the Los Angeles Airport (LAX), and headed up highway 101.

We drove through beautiful Santa Barbara and stopped to eat in San Luis Obispo. We tried to look for a fun place to eat but were in a rush to get back on the road so we settled for Chipotle. Then we hit the road and made it to Cambria and camped in San Simeon State Park. We didn’t have to make reservations, they had a bunch of open spots. It cost us $20 to camp for one night.

The campgrounds were on a little hill and the bathroom facilities were clean and had hand sanitizer, which I thought was a nice touch. We decided to call it a night early at 8pm so we could wake up early and continue our drive. The weather was perfect overnight, around 40 or 50 degrees.

This was the view in the morning.

Dave is addicted to coffee so in the morning we headed to Cambria to find a coffee shop and breakfast spot. While he was getting coffee I walked down the block to see the fun scarecrows that they have displayed all over town. Cambria is a small coastal town that goes all out for Halloween and have a scarecrow fest, super cute.

Here are Popeye and Olive in scarecrow form.

When we travel we depend on Yelp reviews to find fun places to eat. We decided on Creekside Gardens, which was actually featured in Sunset Magazine last month. I ordered Joel’s Breakfast which was 2 eggs scrambled with tomatoes, green onions, mild green chilies & bell pepper that also came with fresh fruit and a muffin. I thought it was tasty, but it was a pretty simple diner, nothing super extraordinary.

After our bellies were full we wanted to get out of the car for a while and go for a little hike. We headed up to Limekiln State Park which cost $10 to enter. There were easy waterfall hikes, (surprising with the drought we currently are going through in California!) with big gorgeous trees surrounding us the entire time.

I posted this picture on Instagram.

I usually share my travels on Travel Thursdays but since this trip was 4 days, and I’m planning to share another interview next week, I’ll split it up and share part 2 tomorrow. So come back to hear about the rest of our hike and beach date in Limekiln State Park, our time in Santa Cruz and San Francisco!

If you’ve stopped along the California coast, I’d love to hear where you stopped!