The classic California road trip remains one of America’s enduring travel fantasies. If you are planning to hit the pavement this summer and explore the Golden State, Alta has solid advice for the traveler considering trading the obvious itinerary for something unexpected, richer, and more distinctly Californian. The destinations below, drawn from Alta’s archive, reveal a state that rewards curiosity more than tourist traps.
Follow the Literary Highway
In his meditation on wandering the Golden State, David Thomson traces a route through memory as much as geography, moving among films, books, and landscapes that shaped his understanding of California. Taking cues from Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, Terrence Malick’s Badlands, and David Hockney’s paintings, Thomson reminds us that every California highway carries cultural baggage alongside traffic.
Road trips here are rarely just transportation. They become a way of reading the state itself. That same spirit animates Alta’s exploration of Joan Didion’s California, which maps the places that informed one of the state’s most influential literary voices. Together, these pieces suggest that the best California road trip itinerary might begin not with GPS coordinates but with a bookshelf.
Reimagine Wine Country
A Sonoma or Napa road trip usually follows a familiar script: tasting room, vineyard, tasting room, vineyard.
But as one Alta writer discovered while exploring wine country sober, there is another version of Northern California’s most famous destination.
Without reservations dictating the schedule, the region reveals different pleasures. Quiet back roads wind through vineyard-covered hills. Small towns reward wandering with local bakeries, coffee shops, art galleries, and hiking trails that become destinations in their own right.
The result is a reminder that our wine country region has always been about more than sipping vino and gawking at grapes. Slow travel often reveals what fast consumption obscures. In a region increasingly defined by luxury experiences, the simple act of exploring one of the world’s most popular drinking destinations—without drinking—can feel surprisingly radical.
Chase California’s Ghosts
Road trips and ghost towns belong together.
In 2024, Alta contributor Lauren Markham set out on a whirlwind journey through some of California’s most haunted and historically resonant places. Beginning in Northern California and looping through the Sierra, her route included Shasta City, Bodie, and Malakoff Diggins—places where the boom-and-bust cycles of California history remain hauntingly visible.
Bodie remains the most famous stop, preserved in a state of “arrested decay.” But the broader lesson of the route is that California’s past is never very far away.
Find the Secret West
The most rewarding California road trips often happen when you leave the itinerary behind.
That’s the philosophy behind Alta’s In Search of the Secret West series, a collection of regional guides. Rather than focusing on famous landmarks, these guides highlight quirky museums, overlooked landscapes, eccentric attractions, and communities that rarely appear in conventional travel brochures. Think you know California? This guide will challenge even the most experienced Golden Stater’s expertise.
Turn Toward the Desert
Many travelers see the Mojave Desert as a very hot and desolate space between worthy destinations. Claire Vaye Watkins sees it differently. In her article for Alta, she describes a landscape shaped as much by geology as mythology. Here, the Little San Bernardino Mountains refuse to follow the rules, running at strange angles that seem to scramble one’s internal compass. The effect is unsettling and exhilarating.
As Watkins suggests, the desert resists easy interpretation. That’s precisely why it’s worth driving through. The Mojave is not a place to rush across, but rather a place to absorb slowly, mile by mile. Just don’t forget your water bottle.
Eat Like a Road-Tripper
Every memorable California road trip eventually becomes a food story.
Farley Elliott’s survey of California’s defining roadside eateries reminds us that the state’s food culture is inseparable from its highways. Produce moves from valley farms to coastal cities. Seafood heads inland. Fast food was reinvented here. Roadside architecture still competes for attention with mountain vistas.
And if you’re driving in Southern California, take a quick culinary pit stop to explore the best restaurants in Oceanside.
In an installment of Ask a Californian, Gustavo Arellano makes an enthusiastic case for Highway 99, praising Fresno and the Central Valley’s endless opportunities for discovery. His argument echoes a larger truth: California’s agricultural heartland is one of the state’s great underappreciated travel experiences.
The coast will always be beautiful, but fruit stands, taco trucks, diners, and family-run restaurants tell a different story about California, one rooted in work, migration, and regional identity.
This summer, skip the obvious checklist. Instead, follow the writers, wanderers, and observers who have spent decades trying to understand and appreciate the state’s true identity. The reward isn’t simply seeing California. It’s seeing it differently.•
