California Pop: California
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California is long, and the distance between its places is part of the appeal. A single drive can take you from foggy coastal cliffs to desert palm groves to forests of giant trees. In California Pop, best friends Anthony and Shikira travel the state hunting its lesser-known pop-culture landmarks, from Gold Country to the Central Valley to the coast, guided by the creators and stewards who keep those places alive. This trip takes the same curiosity to the icons, looping from San Francisco down to San Diego and up to Yosemite at a pace that lets each stop make its case. The link below opens the full trip, and you can change any part of it.
Start in San Francisco
San Francisco is a compact, hilly city on a peninsula, and the itinerary starts with it. A shared shuttle brings you from the airport to the Kimpton Hotel Enso, and the days that follow are all city. A two-hour tour takes you to Alcatraz, the former federal prison on an island in the middle of the bay, and a private cycling tour of about three and a half hours takes on the hills with someone who knows the way.
Then the road turns south along the coast, passing through the seaside town of Half Moon Bay and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, an old-fashioned amusement park right on the sand. The drive ends in Monterey.
Drive the Coast South
Monterey sits on a bay that draws whales, and a whale watching cruise puts you on the water to see them. From there, the highway runs down to Hearst Castle, a hilltop mansion built by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, and on to San Luis Obispo. Santa Barbara comes next, then Santa Monica.
Hearst Castle, visited on the way from Monterey to San Luis Obispo.
Desert, Then Granite
After the coast, the route heads inland. San Diego, near the Mexican border, includes a visit to its zoo. Then you cross the Anza-Borrego desert, a huge expanse of badlands and wildflowers, on the way to Palm Springs, a desert resort town with a long history as a Hollywood getaway.
From there, the landscape rises. A free day among the giant sequoias, trees that live for thousands of years, leads into Yosemite's high country, a park of granite cliffs and waterfalls. The loop returns to San Francisco by way of UC Berkeley, just across the bay.
The Yosemite views alone are worth the trip.
The itinerary books as a single trip through the link below. You can add Central Valley stops to chase the show's offbeat landmarks, trim the parks or extend any leg where the road feels good. Click through and shape it into your own.
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