[Otter74]

I just made a verbal commitment to buy an old BMW I've been looking at to replace my Saab. I'm in Chicago, the BMW is in the east bay. The location is part of the appeal. My partner and I are spending a 5-day Memorial Day weekend in Bellingham, WA visiting good friends. Now, instead of flying there, I'm going to fly to SFO two days early and drive the car up the coast. I'll leave it with my friends and we'll both go back at the beginning of July to drive it home via Montana, etc.

The only parts of the PCH/US1 that I've driven have been from roughly Santa Monica to Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz to Big Sur, so the whole trip will be new to me. One thing I am not going to do, at least until I get near Seattle, is take I-5 unless there's a good reason to. As long as I can get to SEA to pick up my sweetie late on Thursday night, I want to take an enjoyable route. So I'd love to get some beta from people who have driven this part of the coast. Which parts are most worthwhile? Which parts least? What towns or views or whatever are maybe particularly worth stopping at? are there any inland N/S highways worth taking?

In the past I saved links to old posts from Pelicans who described fun driving routes that they took, but I checked and none of them cover where I'm going.