Driving Highway 1

I'm flying into either Sacramento or SFO at the end of March. By the way, is there a preference? Seems like I can save a couple hundred dollars with Sacramento. My intention is mostly hiking/sightseeing for 5-ish days along Highway 1, between Humboldt Redwoods SP, Monterey, and Big Sur, with a detour over to Russian River. I'd appreciate any recommendations for bottle shops and breweries along this stretch. I'll have a rental car, but I'm not really interested in deviating super far off this path, or driving into the heart of San Fransisco (which is where the majority of previous threads seem to center on). Any suggestions for food along the way would be happily accepted as well (bonus points for cool divey places with character). Does anyone have favorite towns to spend the night in?

 

That's a good question. I definitely intend to drive PCH south. For the sake of variety (and distance/efficiency), looks like it'd make sense to take the 101 up to Humboldt. I haven't made the airline reservations yet - I need to check SFO, Sacramento, Oakland (thanks to the other poster for the hint), so that'll factor into the final route.

 

Just got back from my trip, so I thought I owed a report:

Thanks to the excellent feedback, I saved quite a bit of money by choosing a flight into Oakland instead of San Francisco, so thanks for that. By the way, I had a connection in LAX - that may be the worst airport I've ever had the misfortune to spend time in. Small, woefully overcrowded, and under resourced. I was only in CA Monday through Friday, which is why my itinerary is going to seem pretty full.

I started by taking the 101 north to Russian River. What a great place - friendly staff with excellent knowledge of the beers, and excellent food. I ordered a pizza and flight-sized samples of quite a few beers, then grabbed some bottles and swag on my way out. I also stopped at Bottle Barn in Santa Rosa, which has a solid selection. Looked like there was a brewery right across the street, but I was anxious to get to Russian River. After that, I continued north to Humboldt Redwoods State Park, where I spent the night.

The next day I drove PCH to Bodega Bay, with a stop at North Coast brewing in Fort Bragg. Fort Bragg happened to make a convenient stop for a late lunch at a fish shack. We get a few of the North Coast standards here in MI, and I've never really been wowed by anything other than Old Rasputin, so my expectations were somewhat low. However, I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed the visit. My favorite was probably Beachmaster imperial IPA and the cherry berliner weisse. Two negatives, though. 1. No wifi (this is especially a negative when your location is already in an area with sketchy cell service). 2. Nothing on tap other than the brews that can be bought at any decent store. This is a pet peeve of mine - why not offer something special for people who go out of the way to actually visit your brick and mortar location? To be fair, I could have bought a bottle of BA Rasputin or BA Olde Stock to drink at the bar, but I didn't really feel the need to drink a full large-format bottle of 10+% ABV by myself. I loved that stretch of PCH just north of Bodega Bay, driving through the cliffs.

I spent the night in Bodega Bay, then continued south to Monterey. I didn't stop at anywhere in SF because of the timing for one (went through at 9am-ish, after a quick stop at Battery Spencer for the obligatory photos of the bridge), and I didn't want to spend 2-3 hours on a side trip to Cellarmaker or whatnot (1/2 hour in, an hour or two to enjoy the place, 1/2 hour out). Besides, I had a reservation at Ano Nuevo State Park in late morning. After sightseeing for most of the day at Ano Nuevo and Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, I grabbed lunch in Half Moon Bay, then hit the SARA Santa Cruz portal. It wasn't super busy, so it was fun to chat with the bartender for a while. I had a solid hazy IPA and fruited sour. Honestly, I'd like to say more about their beers because I think I would have enjoyed a lot of them, but I wasn't really able to fully enjoy the visit because they don't do anything other than full or half pours. To me, places that do this are just shooting themselves in the foot - they're essentially limiting a customer's ability to sample their products. Unfortunately, I can only say that I had one NE IPA that was somewhat above average, and one sour that was quite good. How is the other 80% of their menu? I have no idea. Contrast that with Russian River. I didn't like every single thing that I tried, but their flight gave me a much better feel for their overall body of work and gave me the experience to know what I wanted to carry out in bottles. I left SARA empty handed for that reason.

Anyway, then down to Monterey. I liked Alvarado Street Brewing a lot. A good selection of styles that *gasp* I was able to try quite a few because, you know, flight sizes. My favorite was a passionfruit sour that had the most straight up fruit flavor of any sour I've ever had. Good IPAs, and a good coconut stout. I also tried Fieldworks in Monterey. They have a cool outdoors vibe, and the beer was also good. Overall, though, I preferred Alvarado.

Finally, it was out of the way because of the ongoing construction to PCH, but I made the drive down to Firestone Walker. I'm glad that I did. The restaurant/taproom surprisingly didn't have anything too exciting on, but the tasting room across the driveway had most of the standouts (Parabola, Sucaba, Stickee Monkey, etc). Do people generally know the tasting room exists? I was the only person in there for most of the time. I wish that tasting room had better hours though. Their company store had what i thought was an excellent selection of bottles too. It would have been nice if they had more of their sours on tap, but that's a minor complaint that didn't mar the experience.