Last week, two friends and I decided to go on a road trip. The objective was simple, drive some of the best roads in california, head for the north through the sierras, and come back home along the coast. While I can’t describe the thrill of the drive in words and photos, we did run into some spectacular scenery. California is beautiful, and diverse. Through our travels we saw deserts, forests, mountains with harrowing cliff side roads, and miles and miles of flat farm land with arrow straight highways.

Our trip started through the Angeles National Forest and landed us right in the middle of the Mojave Desert, from there we turned left and drove into the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.

Overlooking Lake Isabella, from here we head north along the Kern River into Sequoia National Park.

Giant Trees line the road in Sequoia National Park. The road is completely empty except for us because of the government shut down.

Sunset on Lake Success, heading back down the mountain to spend the night in Visalia. Next day we are going back into Sequoia and out to Fresno and eventually north to Sonora which will put us right at the entrance into Yosemite National Park.

Yosemite recently experienced a HUGE forest fire that burned hundreds of thousands of acres, this is the devastation left by the fire.

Yosemite park was also closed due to the government shut down, we were not supposed to stop at any point along the highways but this view was too incredible to pass up.

Sonora Pass was by far one of the craziest roads I’ve driven. Heading east from monolake back to Sonora, at the beginning of the route, a sign warned us of a 26% grade incline. The road itself was like a roller coaster, taking just a few miles to get from the base of mono lake to almost 10,000 ft.

We spent the night in Vallejo. The next day we headed north west to check out Point Reyes National Seashore, due to the government shut down, the beaches and the light house were closed, so we turned around and started down HWY 1.

The entrance to Marin Headlands was packed with tourists, possibly because like Point Reyes it was closed at the top. We waited around and managed to find parking, and spent a few minutes hanging out overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Then we promptly left San Francisco before rush hour traffic, and spent the night in Monterey. The next day was spent cruising down HWY 1 along California’s majestic coast line.

Eventually we turned onto another mountain road that crossed us over to hwy 33 and then back onto the 5 freeway. At this point, fatigue was setting in, we arrived in Los Angeles just in time to get home and knock out.

note: missing a few photos, more will be uploaded as I get through them