Northern California Road Trip

Explore Redwood National Park!

We visited Northern California as part of an epic 2 week Pacific Northwest Trip. The thing we were the most excited to see along the way was Redwood National Park, but we also came across so many other amazing adventures. California is full of natural beauty and endless activities.

Itinerary:

Day 1 – San Francisco
Day 2 – San Francisco -> Bodega Bay
Day 3 – Bodega Bay -> Fort Bragg
Day 4 – Fort Bragg -> Redwood National Park
Day 5 – Redwood National Park

Check out the full video here:

Day 1 – Fly to San Francisco

On this day we took a flight from Cincinnati – Atlanta – San Francisco. Easy flight and arrived around 4:30 SF time

We stayed at the Embassy Suites Airport Waterfront hotel which had a free airport shuttle, free evening reception and an amazing breakfast (oh and 2 rooms!) – this hotel was great and had a small balcony to watch planes come into the airport. Great hotel.

Our plan was to take it easy tonight but my husband saw that our home baseball team, the Reds were playing in San Francisco! My husband and older son decided to go for a bit, and took an uber there, while my younger son and I ordered uber eats and just hung out at the hotel.

Day 2 – San Francisco to Bodega Bay

First thing in the morning my husband took the airport shuttle back to the airport to get our rental. It was only barely big enough for our family and included me sitting with stuff under my feet for 2 weeks 😐 we thought we could fit everything but we didn’t pack light enough.

By about 9am we were off on the road heading towards the Golden Gate Bridge. We made a quick stop at Target for a pickup order (super convenient – I ordered the night before some snacks, sunscreen, ice packs etc)

We made a quick stop at an overlook for the Golden Gate Bridge (golden gate viewpoint). We drove across and headed up to the overlook on the left (note – must order your pass to cross the bridge ahead of time)

After the viewpoint, we drove down to Sausalito. We parked near the bay and wandered the town for a bit. Then headed over to the houseboat areas. We parked and walked around to look at them – very cool.

Following that – it was around lunch time but we were still full from our big breakfast, so we decided to skip lunch and head towards Point Reyes. We took the Sir Francis Drake Blvd route because I heard it was more scenic. Right before heading to the national seashore, we stopped in the town of Point Reyes. We wandered around to a few nice little markets and picked up a picnic lunch! It was perfect and a charming little town.

We took our lunch and drove on. We stopped at the shipwreck and ate our lunch there. There weren’t really picnic tables but we kind of sat on this huge tree stump. Wasn’t perfect but it worked. The shipwreck was really neat.

Next up – headed towards the Cyprus tree tunnel. I thought it was just going to be a bit overhyped but we really enjoyed it. We walked to the end of it and the kids had fun climbing on trees along the way.

Next – we drove towards Bodega Bay. We only made one stop on our way in to see the church and house from the movie The Birds. Kind of cool and not far out of the way. It was funny showing the kids clips from what was, at the time, a super scary movie. Needless to say – they found it more funny than scary.

We stayed the night at Inn at the Tides and it was incredible. The room was beautiful, they gave us free wine, free breakfast (more on that later) and had a gorgeous pool and hot tub.

We went for a quick swim then out for dinner. It was a Saturday night but almost all the restaurants we looked at were closing at 5pm. Crazy! We ended up at Fishermans Cove, which was perfect. Good food, picnic tables. Then we went back to the hotel for some more swimming!

Day 3 – Bodega Bay to Fort Bragg

In the morning, we went right across the street to the Tides Restaurant. Our hotel provided us with free continental breakfast at the restaurant and the food was amazing! We got there right when it opened and enjoyed a table overlooking the bay. Really nice.

Next up – drove towards Goat Rock State Beach (goonie’s filming location). It’s cool even if you don’t care about the Goonies. We drove all the way to the bottom and had some cool views. I looked at, but didn’t end up going because we were full, but there’s a restaurant called Café Aquatica that looks great if you need more coffee.

Our next destination was the Point Arena Lighthouse. We stopped at a grocery store in a town a few miles away and grabbed stuff for sandwiches. There were picnic tables at the lighthouse so we used it as a picnic stop. We didn’t go up in the lighthouse, but enjoyed the view.

Then we drove about an hour to Mendocino where we hiked a bit on the headlands. There was a really near beach you can walk down to.

After hanging there for a bit we headed into Fort Bragg and checked into our hotel, the Surf and Sand Lodge. This hotel was amazing as well. It had a deck with adirondack chairs, comfy robes, and was right on a walking path with views of the beach.

We headed out to an early dinner at Noyo Fish Company which wasn’t too far down the street. This was another great meal with picnic tables and views of the docks. Stopped at the grocery on the way home for some wine and picked up donuts and fruit for breakfast the next day

After dinner we walked about 15 min down the path to Glass Beach. It was an easy walk and we enjoyed seeing the beach. Then back to hotel to watch the ocean and drink our wine 🙂

Day 4 – Fort Bragg to McKinleyville (Redwoods!)

On this day we followed route 1 inland to see some redwoods! We drove first to the town of Leggett, which was a gorgeous drive. We made our first stop at the Chandelier Drive Through Tree which was really fun and since we were there early we had it almost all to ourselves. They also had a nice, inexpensive gift shop which was good for the kids.

Next up – we drove not too far down to Confusion Hill. This was so cool. The kids (and us!) loved the mystery house. We also took the train ride which was fun, and we were the only ones on it! Really neat stop.

We had to backtrack a bit to get to lunch, but our timing was off and we weren’t hungry until after confusion hill. We ate at Peg House which had great burgers, fun atmosphere and a basketball hoop for my son.

Then, on to Avenue of the Giants! This was so fun. We made a few stops along the way to pull off and see some downed trees, huge trees etc. We did one hike here, which was Founders Grove. It was only 0.5 miles but we spent probably over an hour here. It was our favorite. Nice, flat trail and tons of trees to climb on.

We had planned to drive to Ferndale after this but we were already kind of tired of driving so we headed towards Eureka/Arcata/McKinleyville. In Eureka we only made one quick stop at a little Chocolate store downtown just to see the historic area. We drove past some victorian houses also. Then we headed to ‘Redwood Park’ which was a local park with huge redwoods around us! It was so awesome. We parked and let our kids play at the playground and there was a nice basketball hoop there too.

After that – just a quick stop for groceries for the next day since we were going to be hiking all day, and then grabbed pizza to take to our hotel. We stayed at the Holiday Inn by the airport which was a nice hotel, nothing exciting but it was pretty secluded and some of the downtown areas around Arcata looked not super nice.

Day 5 – McKinleyville to Crescent City (even more Redwoods!)

Today was a great day of hiking! We ate a big breakfast at our hotel then set off on our drive.

First stop was the Lady Bird Johnson trail (1.3mi). We almost skipped this because we thought we may want to prioritize longer, better hikes, but we were glad we did this. We came early in the morning and it wasn’t crowded. The trail was really beautiful.

We then had a few more hikes we wanted to do but knew we couldn’t fit them all in. So we came up with a plan! For Trillium Falls (2.3mi) – we decided to not do the loop and instead only walk to the falls and back which was much shorter. Really beautiful trail.

Next up – we parked at the Elk Creek Campground down the Newton B Drury Parkway. Can’t miss it because everyone in the world is parked there. We did about a 3 mile hike here which started at the Visitor Center and went Prairie Creek and Foothill Trail – Cathedral Trees. This was a wonderful hike, pretty easy and not that crowded once you got past the visitor center. At Big Tree it was crowded again but then as we went the Cathedral Trees path we were alone. We did get a little turned around at the end and thought we were lost (which maybe we were a little bit) but made it back fine. We had packed our lunches that morning and packed them in a backpack cooler so we just ate on the trail.

Next we drove to Crescent City – we skipped Trees of Mystery – it looked kind of fun but it was a little pricey and we opted to spend more time at our accommodations for the night instead. At Crescent City, we first stopped at the sea lion colony – there were not a ton but there were a few. Then made a quick stop at a park for some more basketball and let the kids play. Then we went to the grocery and picked up food to make tacos for the night. This night we booked a tiny home to stay in and it was amazing. It had 2 bedrooms, a small living room and kitchen and a nice front porch and picnic table. We made dinner and just hung out. Wonderful night! We had planned to do one more hike in Jedediah Smith Redwoods, but since we were exhausted and our home was already in the park we decided to just stay.

That was the end of our California adventure! We’ve now driven the entire coast and loved every second. Check out our other blogs about the southern coast of Cali or the continuation of this trip up the northern part of the west coast!