From Seattle to San Francisco - Road Trip Along USA's West Coast

Fifteen days down the Pacific coast from Seattle to San Francisco, which keeps to the coast road for most of its length rather than cutting inland for speed.

Seattle opens it with two nights, Pike Place Market, the Space Needle and the Museum of Pop Culture, a Frank Gehry building that looks like a smashed guitar. Astoria follows for two nights at the mouth of the Columbia, where The Goonies was filmed in 1985 and where the Maritime Museum explains why this river bar has wrecked so many ships.

Cannon Beach then gets two nights, with Haystack Rock standing seventy metres out of the sand and a private bonfire on the beach with s’mores. Depoe Bay follows with a whale-watching cruise; grey whales are resident along this coast year round, with humpbacks and blues passing through in season.

Coos Bay, Eureka and Mendocino carry the route into California. Eureka has an extraordinary quantity of surviving Victorian architecture, the Carson Mansion above all, and Mendocino sits on a headland with an optional railbike through the redwoods. Napa then gets a night with a winery lunch, and San Francisco closes the trip with three, taking in Golden Gate Park, Fisherman’s Wharf, Haight-Ashbury where the Summer of Love happened in 1967, and an eight-mile bike ride over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. Original Travel include the hire car, accommodation, the tours and cruises, local concierge access, a 24-hour helpline and carbon absorption through their own programme. International flights and most meals are separate. Prices run from 5,050 to 7,600 pounds per person.