Five ways to spend
four nights

2h from the flat. Walkable town, the surf break, and four roasters within ten minutes.

• Fri 28Get there slowly. Down the San Mateo coast — Gray Whale Cove, the lighthouse at Pigeon Point, warm artichoke bread in Pescadero. Arrive late afternoon and don't move again.
• Sat 29Surf, then nothing. Morning lesson at Cowell's, afternoon in Capitola or on the Westside coffee crawl. No driving at all. Dinner at Shadowbrook, which you reach by funicular down a fern-covered hillside.

1h further south. Puts Point Lobos and Bixby Creek on your doorstep instead of at the end of a long day.

• Sun 30Point Lobos. The finest stretch of coastal walking in California — cypress, turquoise coves, sea lions barking below. Carmel for the evening.
• Mon 31Bixby Creek at sunrise. Fifteen minutes south, the most photographed bridge on the west coast, empty at 7am. Back for breakfast, then otters at Elkhorn Slough or a second go at Point Lobos.

This is the unpack-once trip. Everything is inside 45 minutes of the river — Armstrong Redwoods is 5, Healdsburg 25, the Sonoma Coast 35, Occidental 25. You carry your bag in on Friday and don't touch it again until Tuesday.

• Fri 28Get there and stop. 1h45, nearly all motorway. Settle in, walk into Guerneville, eat, sleep properly.
• Sat 29Redwoods and the river. Armstrong Redwoods five minutes up the road — thousand-year-old trees, flat trails, no shuttle and no reservation. Then swim or paddle the river in the afternoon.
• Sun 30The coast. West to where the river meets the sea — Jenner, Goat Rock, the seal pups at the river mouth, then Bodega Bay for oysters on a dock. Home to the river by evening.
• Mon 31Wine on foot. Twenty-five minutes to Healdsburg, park once, and walk between about twenty tasting rooms. Or Occidental and the cedar-enzyme baths at Osmosis.

1h15 from the flat. Water on the doorstep, oysters up the road, and the darkest skies in the Bay Area.

• Fri 28Full moon on the water. Get there mid-afternoon, then the moonlit kayak tour from Heart's Desire Beach — three hours, from $125 each, tandem. Tonight is the only night the moon does this.
• Sat 29Elk and oysters. Tomales Point runs nine miles down a treeless spine with ocean on both sides and wild elk in the grass — or Abbotts Lagoon if that's plenty. Then shuck your own at the farm the oysters came from.

40 min from base 1, 45 min from home. The surf break and the Mount Tam trailheads both within fifteen minutes.

• Sun 30Learn to surf. Bolinas is waist-deep and empty — the group class is $120 for both of you. Then the beach, and a hot tub if wherever you're staying has one.
• Mon 31The best hike in Marin. The Matt Davis–Steep Ravine loop from Pantoll, fifteen minutes up the hill: down a redwood canyon with a wooden ladder scramble, back along open grassland with the Farallon Islands on the horizon.

Stay put and let the park come to you. With 555 miles to cover anyway, moving accommodation as well would be punishing — so book one place outside the gate, unpack, and drive in each morning. It also means you're never looking for somewhere to sleep after a long day at altitude.

• Fri 28Just get there. Three hours, deliberately stopping short of the park. Arriving relaxed matters more than arriving early. Buy beans in Mariposa on the way past.
• Sat 29The Valley, at dawn. Through the gate before 8am, then leave the car and use the free shuttles all day. Tunnel View, Cook's Meadow, Mirror Lake, and El Capitan meadow at dusk with binoculars on the climbers.
• Sun 30Tioga Road. The road most visitors never drive. Olmsted Point, a swim in Tenaya Lake at 8,150 ft, then Tuolumne Meadows under Lembert Dome. Utterly different from the valley and a fraction of the people.
• Mon 31Sequoias, then slow down. Mariposa Grove in the morning — five hundred mature giant sequoias, the largest living things you will ever stand beside. Then an afternoon doing nothing, because Tuesday is long.

3h from the flat — the one long drive of the trip, done on the Friday while you're fresh. Then the coast is all on foot or fifteen minutes away.

• Fri 28Get up there. Up the 101, then west on 128 through the redwood tunnel along the Navarro. Arrive late afternoon, walk the headland trail that circles the village at dusk.
• Sat 29Sea caves. Kayak into the cliffs at Van Damme in the morning, Russian Gulch and the Devil's Punchbowl after lunch, Glass Beach at Fort Bragg in the afternoon. Nothing more than fifteen minutes from base.

Splits the drive home in half. A narrow inland valley growing some of the best cool-climate Pinot in America, with a fraction of Napa's traffic and none of its attitude.

• Sun 30The prettiest hour of the trip. South along the cliffs to Elk — one of the emptiest beautiful stretches of coast in California — then turn inland up the Navarro to the valley.
• Mon 31Wine, quietly. Tasting rooms strung along Highway 128 with nobody in them, lunch at the market in Boonville, and an afternoon of doing nothing much.