Travelling West Coast
Replies: 8 - Last Post: Nov 25, 2012 4:58 PM Last Post By: yorkshiremale1982
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Travelling West Coast
I have been looking into making a a trip sometime early 2014 down the west coast of the US, though starting in Vancouver. It is something I have wanted to do for a while now but not really looked into until recently and tbh it looks pretty decent price wise if willing to stay in hostels etc. Probably spending 1- 2 months traveling.I know its a wee while in advance but just looking for a few pointers.
I was thinking of Flying into NY and spending a few days with friends, then catching a cross country train up to Seattle, then connecting to Vancouver and starting from there and catching the train to different spots and maybe spending a couple or more days in each place. I have looked into routes and this is my favorite so far, any thoughts anyone?
Vancouver
Seattle
Portland
San Francisco
San Jose
Las Vegas
LA
Hawaii (possibly) seen flights for around £220 return from LAX
San Diego
Has anyone done anything like this before. I know you can get special Amtrak passes for California which look good value.
I just think it would be a fantastic way to see the west coast.
Any help or advice would be much appreciated, or if yo have a spare house in each city even better ;)
Forgot to mention it is something I was planning to do on my own but always open to new travel partners if anyone fancied it.
Thanks in advance
Mike
Edited by: yorkshiremale1982
1
Why San Jose? If you were thinking to visit Google or Apple, they do not have tours, I'd drop that city. Any way you can rent a car for at least the drive from SF to LA and SD? Otherwise you will miss most of the coast (the best parts at least like Big Sur) as the train goes inland until south of San Luis Obisbo. Anyway have a great trip.2
What time of year?There is only one train a day between Seattle & Sacramento, although there are some AMTRAK buses that cover part of the route. There are multiple trains a day between Sacramento & SF. Most of the "trains" between SF and Los Angeles are actually combinations of AMTRAK bus and train.
The train from Seattle is the Coast Starlight. It can be a beautiful trip, but the train is also notorious for being late. There is no train station in SF; you get off at Emeryville, on the east side of San Francisco Bay, and AMTRAK takes you To SF by bus.
I'm not sure what you plan to do in San Jose, but it's not the easiest place to get around without a car. Los Angeles is even tougher.
Hawaii (possibly) seen flights for around £220 return from LAX
Keep an eye out for deals to Hawaii from unexpected places, such as Sacramento.
3
Thanks for the input.Hiring a car sounds a good idea for the last bit then,
Thanks for the info on San Jose, Looks like it will be worth dropping it the.
As I say its not for a while, I just want to get drift of an idea,
4
Nutrax nailed it. We Americans just don't have the train sytems that make it a joy to train travel in Europe.If you want to ride the rails, though, the East Coast-West Coast train ride is easier than the piecemeal
system we have from Seattle to Los Angeles. Thankfully,the planned high-speed tracks
between San Francisco and LA which will get you between the two cities in around 3 hours!
It won't be completed for several years-
6
That was a worry Midwesterner especially for the North West Region, thanks for the infoThanks kenko on the info on the trains, I have only used amtrak in the northeast and it worked fine but suppose that was between the big cities.,
Maybe that's why they do the cheap passes in california because it is so bad lol, amazing to learn that a city like san fran doesnt have a station, I just took that as a given especially living here in the UK.
7
amazing to learn that a city like san fran doesnt have a station, I just took that as a given especially living here in the UK.
Primarily because there are no railroad tracks leading into the city, except from the south for a commuter train called CalTrain. The bridges over the SF bay and the Golden Gate were not built until the 1930s, so originally, rail cars, even whole trains, were carried in on ferries, but it was mostly freight. A few years after the bridges were finished, the ferries stopped running. The Bay Bridge originally had train tracks on the lower deck, but they were for local electric trains.
The railroads ran passenger ferries from the East Bay train terminals to the Ferry Building in SF, so that was the defacto train station. AMTRAK still operates from a building next door to the ferry building.
There was a Southern Pacific station that served trains coming up from the south. It was demolished in the 1970s when SP got out of the passenger business.
