Lonely Planet's California guide

LONELY Planet gives the lowdown on coastal California from San Francisco's eclectic neighbourhoods to unspoilt Big Sur and the Redwood National Park.

Escape California

FROM towering coast redwoods in foggy northern California to the perfectly sun-kissed surf beaches of southern California, this 1770km of Pacific Coast is a knockout beauty.

**Beaches and outdoors

In all of your California daydreaming, palm trees, golden sands and Pacific sunsets beckon, right? Here's the good news: in coastal California, those cinematic fantasies really can come true. You can learn to surf, drink a cocktail with your feet in the sand, play a game of pickup volleyball or join a drum circle.

Beach towns from Santa Cruz south to San Diego, each with an idiosyncratic personality, give you perfect excuses to hit the road.

North of San Francisco, dramatically windswept beaches have inspired generations of poets and painters, offering kilometres of oceanfront for beachcombing and walking in solitude.

If you can tear yourself away from the ocean, myriad adventures await on land. When that infamous San Andreas Fault shakes, rattles and rolls, think of it as a reminder of just how wild the coastal California experience can be.

 ** Big cities and small towns

No less astoundingly diverse than the landscape are all of the people who have staked their fortunes on coastal California. Start out exploring San Francisco's eclectic neighbourhoods, from beatnik North Beach and historic Chinatown to arty SoMa and the hipsterville Mission.

Then join the star-crossed paparazzi as they chase TV and silver-screen celebrities with their glam entourages in LA.

Hang with radical tree-sitting lefties in the Humboldt Nation, live the very good life in California's wine country towns, get groovy with modern-day hippies in Santa Cruz and new-age gurus in San Diego's North County, or talk fishing with salty dogs in old port towns such as Eureka, Bodega Bay and Monterey.

** Food and drink

Finding the most-killer fish tacos in San Diego alone could take days or even weeks.

San Francisco and Los Angeles are global foodie capitals, where citizens passionately argue about the best sushi bar, gourmet food truck or pop-up kitchen. LA is also a melting pot of multicultural cooking, from Little Tokyo and Thai Town to the tamale shops of East LA.

Follow your nose and let it lead you up and down California's coastal highways, stopping at rollicking seafood shacks, brewpubs and farmers markets, or follow two-lane back roads that wind past pastoral vineyards.

** Top experiences

-- San Francisco's neighbourhoods

Get to know San Francisco from the inside out, from mural-lined alleyways named after poets to clothing-optional beaches on a former military base.

Don't be too quick to dismiss San Francisco's wild ideas. Biotech, gay rights, personal computers, cable cars and organic fine dining were once considered outlandish too, before San Francisco introduced these underground ideas into the mainstream decades ago. 

Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz are entirely optional San Franciscans mostly admire them from afar leaving you free to pursue inspiration through Golden Gate Park, past flamboyantly painted Victorian homes and through Mission galleries.

Just don't be late for your sensational, sustainable dinner: in San Francisco, you can find happiness and eat it too.

-- Big Sur

Big Sur is more a state of mind than a place you can pinpoint on a map.

There are no traffic lights, banks or strip malls, and when the sun goes down, the moon and the stars are the only streetlights if summer's dense fog hasn't extinguished them, that is.

Much ink has been spilt extolling the raw beauty and energy of this precious piece of land shoehorned between the Santa Lucia Range and the Pacific Ocean, but nothing quite prepares you for your first glimpse of the craggy, unspoiled coastline. 

In the 1950s and '60s, Big Sur so named by Spanish settlers living on the Monterey Peninsula, who referred to the wilderness as el pais grande del sur ("the big country to the south") became a retreat for artists and writers, including Henry Miller and Beat Generation visionaries such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Today Big Sur attracts self-proclaimed artists, new-age mystics, latter-day hippies and city slickers seeking to unplug and reflect more deeply. 

** Los Angeles

You may think you know what to expect from LA: celebrity worship, plastic surgery junkies, endless traffic, earthquakes, wildfires.

True, your waitress might be tomorrow's starlet and you may spot artificially enhanced blondes and phone-clutching honchos weaving lanes at 130km/h, but LA is intensely diverse and brimming with fascinating neighbourhoods and characters that have nothing to do with the "Industry" (entertainment, to the rest of us).

Its innovative cooking has pushed the boundaries of American cuisine for generations.

Arts and architecture? Frank Lloyd Wright to Frank Gehry.

Music? The Doors to Dr Dre and Dudamel. 

So do yourself a favour and leave preconceptions in the suitcase. LA's truths are not doled out on the silver screen or gossip rags; rather, you will discover them in everyday interactions.

Chances are, the more you explore, the more you'll enjoy. 

- Redwood National and State Parks

A patchwork of public lands jointly administered by the state and federal governments, the Redwood National and State Parks (nps.gov/redw) include Redwood National Park, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park and Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.

A smattering of small towns break up the forested area, making it a bit confusing to get a sense of the parks as a whole. Prairie Creek and Jedediah Smith parks were originally slated for clear-cutting, but in the 1960s activists successfully protected them and today all these parks are an International Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site.

Little-visited compared with their southern brethren, the world's tallest living trees have been standing here for time immemorial, predating the Roman Empire by more than 500 years. Prepare to be impressed.

* California cuisine

As you graze the Golden State, you'll often have cause to compliment the chef but they're quick to turn around and share the praise with local farmers, ranchers, fishers and artisan food producers.

Almost anything can and does grow in California's fertile valleys; rain-soaked coastal pastures provide grazing territory for livestock; sun-drenched vineyards overflow with prized grapes; and with so much coastline, seafood just doesn't get much fresher than this. 

** This is an edited extract from Lonely Planet Coastal California (4th Edition) by Sara Benson et al. Lonely Planet 2012. Published this month, RRP: $36.99, lonelyplanet.com