California Coast Travel Guidebook
Lonely Planet's Guide to Coastal California and Driving Highway 1
The California coast is one of the state's best attractions. The Lonely Planet guide covers Disneyland, Pacific Coast Highway, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.
There are many good guidebooks to California, but the California coast deserves one of its own. Lonely Planet has obliged by publishing Coastal California, a 288-page guide to the best that the west coast has to offer: Los Angeles, Disneyland, San Diego, San Francisco, the Pacific Coast Highway, surfing, Big Sur, Monterey and Giant Redwoods, and even includes a short section on where you go when you run out of California coast – go to Tijuana in Mexico.
This Lonely Planet Coastal California guide is written by two local expert authors. John A Vlahides lives in San Francisco and writes about the San Francisco Bay Area and the North Coast, while Alex Hershey, who used to work for Lonely Planet in Oakland, handles the Central Coast, Los Angeles and Orange County, the San Diego area and Coastal California Outdoors. No small task, so it's not surprising to learn that the authors spent over 700 hours of on-the-ground research and helped produce 64 detailed maps not to mention interviews with LA surfers and San Francisco drag queens.
They also unearthed lots of California fast facts:
- The California coastline is 1100 miles long
- The average age in California is 33.3 years, two years younger than the US average
- The average household income in California is $49,300 (US average $43,318)
- 12% of Americans live in California
- The average rush-hour speed on LA freeways is 17mph
California is frequently dismissed as fluffy and superficial, but you only have to look at some of the books on the list of 'Top Reads' the authors have compiled to realise what a fascinatingly varied place it is: John Steinbeck, Amy Tan, Dashiell Hammett, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, Dave Eggers, Bret Easton Ellis and Maxine Hong Kingston. And that doesn't even include Raymond Chandler, Joan Didion, Armistead Maupin or Michael Connelly.
Coastal California covers everything from Disneyland to giant redwoods, from whale-watching to Universal Studios and from Knott's Berry Farm to Sonoma wine country. The authors cover everything with equal enthusiasm, in typically thorough Lonely Planet fashion – where to stay, where to eat, what to see, opening hours, admission prices and where to check your emails. There are detailed town and city maps for every important place along the west coast, marking exactly where you can find the attractions, the hotels and the restaurants, the shopping, the transport, and the sources of information.
For visitors who are only planning to go to one place, such as LA or San Francisco, then there are more detailed guidebooks to be had to those destinations. But if you are planning to travel along the California coast then Coastal California is definitely a good guidebook to buy, whether you want family attractions or the authors' recommended 'freaks and weirdos' tour.
The Lonely Planet guide to Coastal California costs $19.99 in the USA and £12.99 in the UK. This second edition was published in April 2007.
