Hostal san francisco to la by car drivers#

There are a couple of Best Western hotels with great ocean views and often reasonable prices during midweek off-season months. There are hotels lining the cliff edge on the north end of town, the view shown in the photo. Pismo Beach, a beach town of about 8,000 residents, is ten miles south of San Luis Obispo. Pismo Beach is most expensive of the three options for hotel stays since this is the main California beach town for the region. Pismo Beach, California, population 8,000 residents (and probably 4,000 tourists many days) San Luis Obispo is a college town with California State University San Luis Obispo, a historical California agricultural and engineering polytechnic university founded in 1901. 101 and the hotels are generally more upscale than Santa Maria, along with higher prices. SLO has many chain brand hotels, easily accessible from U.S. 101, mostly in California style shopping mall locations in the more recently developed south end of the city. Fortunately, the chain brand hotels of SLO are easily located right off U.S. San Luis Obispo is an interesting college town with bars and restaurants downtown, once you figure out where downtown is located after exiting U.S. San Luis Obispo has lots of hotels for a city its size, but it is a university town and also highly touristed as the main city for a hotel night for travelers before or after driving the 130 mile stretch of Highway 1 along the Big Sur coast between Monterey and San Luis Obispo. The town is locally named by saying the letters in acronym form S-L-O.

Hostal san francisco to la by car drivers#

Most drivers will pass through SLO when entering or departing Highway 1 Big Sur coast drive. San Luis Obispo, population 45,000, elevation 233 is the most northerly of the three San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara central coast California towns with a choice of hotels. San Luis Obispo, California Population 45,000 SLO, Pismo Beach and Santa Maria are the cities with the most hotels between Monterey and Santa Barbara on a 240 mile drive along Highway 1/U.S. The reason Santa Maria is lower priced than nearly any other location is it’s the largest city between Salinas and Santa Barbara in the central coast region of California and Santa Maria is ten miles inland from the ocean. There are no Starwood Hotels along the California coast between San Jose and Ventura (300 miles). There are no Hyatt Hotels between Monterey/Carmel (2 Hyatt properties) and Santa Barbara (250 miles). Santa Maria, California is most frequently the lowest priced place for chain brand hotels between San Francisco and Los Angeles with most of the major chains represented including Hilton, Marriott, IHG, Radisson and of course Best Western, Choice Hotels and Wyndham. Santa Maria, California, population 100,000 This is a good city for a hotel stop when driving the California central coast and you are trying to budget your spend. When I leave too late in the day to make the drive in one day, I tend to stay in Santa Maria.

Now and then I make the drive 300 miles south to L.A. My normal Highway 1 trip is for the simple pleasures in life like grocery shopping and driving to the beach. I live in Monterey, California and most days I drive Highway 1 only along a 20 mile stretch between Costco in Sand City and Carmel Highlands, the town before launching off into Big Sur on Highway 1. This section of Highway 1 is a three hour drive without stops, if there is no traffic impeding your potential speed. The most photographed world-famous scenic part of Highway 1 is the 130-mile drive from Monterey in the north at Monterey Bay to Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo in the south. The value added information here is where you will likely find the best hotel deals in cities along the way for your stops over the two or three day drive or however long you plan to spend. Plenty of guides tell you what there is to see along the route. This is my local’s tips article on driving California Highway 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles. And those are just the detours on the 130-mile journey between Monterey and San Luis Obispo. This means you will likely want to stay overnight somewhere, if you plan to experience and feel more of the California vibe than simply ten hours feeling the vibrations of your vehicle.Īdd time to photograph whales, hike in a Big Sur redwood forest, visit Pfeiffer Beach in Big Sur, see a coastal waterfall at McWay Falls, view massive elephant seals on the beach at Piedras Blancas, tour a lighthouse or two, or visit Hearst Castle and you will require many more hours or days for your driving trip. The drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles, staying mostly on Highway 1 is over 400 miles and around a ten hour drive with no stops. Tens of thousands of tourists over the next few months will drive the coastline of California along State Route 1, aka Highway 1 or Pacific Coast Highway or PCH.