From great cities to amazing National Parks, California is the perfect destination for a nice trip. Discover our packed 2 weeks itinerary from San Francisco to Los Angeles via Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, and Sequoia. It’s a great mix of hikes, beaches, city activity, and stop by some of the best breweries in the region.

Itinerary:

Trip details:

A high level summary of the trip is present below. Dedicated pages are available with more information on San Francisco, Los Angeles & Laguna Beach, and the road trip between these 2 cities. A map of the trip is also available at the end of this page.

San Francisco

Our trip started in San Francisco. We arrived on a Thursday around noon and started by walking along the iconic cable car streets, the piers and doing the Alcatraz visit by night. For the second day, a Friday, we rented bikes to cross the Golden Gate and go to Sausalito. These two initial days contains the best activities. For our 3rd day we walked around Dolores park, and the piers.

More details on San Francisco here.

From San Francisco to Yosemite via Tahoe

We pickup a car at Oakland early in a Sunday morning a drove to Lake Tahoe Emerald bay. On our way we stopped to buy some food for picnic and a small cooler. We also stopped at Moonraker Brewing to grab few beers. At Emerald bay, we hiked to Eagle lake and then went to our hotel in south lake Tahoe. The short hike to Eagle Lake was beautiful and offered a nice break after all the driving.

The day after we started by Sand Harbor beach and then drove to June Lake via Carson City and Mono Lake. This road has great landscape with multiples lakes. We also enjoyed June Lake Brewing.

Yosemite

From June Lake we toke the Tioga pass and drove to Tenaya Lake to do one of the best Yosemite hike: Cloud Rest. We then drove to Yosemite Valley and visited the store and the visitor center. To finish the day we enjoyed a great sunset from Tunnel view before our night at Curry Village.

For our second day in Yosemite we hiked Half Dome. This is a long but amazing hike from the waterfalls to the Half Dome cables. We then drove to Oakhurst for the night.

Sequoia

From Oakhurst we drove back to Yosemite Mariposa Grove. We then headed to Kings Canyon via Fresno. The visit of Kings Canyon was fast since the road to Cedar Grove was closed during our trip in 2023. We continued to Sequoia and enjoyed a great sunset at Moro Rock.

The next day we explored Sequoia a little bit more focusing on General Sherman and Crescent Meadow area. We were lucky to see a nice bear in Crescent Meadow. We then drove to Morro Bay to watch sea otters.

More details about the road trip here.

Los Angeles / Laguna Beach

From Morro Bay we drove along the coast to Hollywood. We did a quick visit of the Walk of Fame and the Getty Museum. Our second day was focused on studio visits with Paramount and Warner Bros. They are different visits, and both interesting if you like movies and TV shows.

We finished Hollywood by visiting the Academy Award museum and drove to Laguna beach with a quick stop by Monkish Brewing. Laguna beach was the end of the trip and is perfect stop to relax and enjoy some beach time and nice sunset walk. On the last day we drove back to Los Angeles stopping at Venice and Santa Monica Pier before our flight.

More details on LA and Laguna Beach here.

Practical Information

When to go?

We did our trip from end of September to beginning of October. We had a perfect weather (except some wind at lake Tahoe). End of September and early October is one of the best period to do this trip. These are some aspects to consider:

• Weather in San Francisco can be very cloudy during the summer. End of September and October is usually better.
• For Tahoe, Yosemite, Mono Lake part, you can’t go too early or to late in the season otherwise the Tioga pass or some roads are closed.
• During the summer you can have thunder storms in Yosemite. It can limit your hikes, and the park can be very crowded.
• You should also avoid the busiest activities (as example Yosemite) during the weekend and holiday period if you can.

Planning:

Some of the trip need to be planned in advance:

• In Yosemite and Sequoia, sleeping inside the park is good to avoid a lot of driving. But lodges are limited, expensive, and need reservation in advance. (last minute may work if you are flexible). As example we were not able to find two consecutive nights end of September in Yosemite when we booked in June.
• In Yosemite, Half Dome hike require a permit with application on April 1st. Some permits are available few days before.
• In San Francisco, Alcatraz visit should be booked few weeks in advance.
• The Museum in Los Angeles (Getty and Academy Award) need to be booked few days in advance.

For the car rental we did a pick-up in San Francisco area and a drop off in Los Angeles to save some driving. In San Francisco area we took the car at Oakland airport. The rent was a lot less expensive and it was just slightly longer Uber ride compact to San Francisco airport.

Food and Booze:

For food we mixed good restaurants, Fast Food, picnic/sandwiches. In California we found some Fast Food that are not present in Boston. We had to try some of them: In and Out, Jack in the Box as example. We also bought a small cooler. It was very practical with some ice usually available in the hotels to keep fresh some cheese, charcuterie, beers during the road trip. We enjoyed some nice Sunset thanks to that.

For drinks we tried as many local craft brewery as we could. The best ones were Moonraker, June Lake, and Monkish.

Reflecting on the itinerary

It was overall a good itinerary to mix cities and Natural parks. We could have removed one night in San Francisco to spend few more time in Tahoe, June Lake or Yosemite. It would have allowed us to see Glacier point in Yosemite as example. After Sequoia, stopping by Morro bay instead of driving directly to Los Angeles add some driving hours but we wanted to see Otters so it was a good choice.

Full map of the trip is available below. More breweries and hikes by following-us on Untappd or Instagram (boozy_the_moose).