Free form trips are much more fun and you make much more interesting discoveries.
Most weekends at popular places in California will be a zoo (all those people got to go somewhere :), so if you can be there on a Sunday or Monday you will be more successful. Places like Yosemite, especially in the valley are only nice, really early or late in the season, as all the people ruin the experience. Are you going there as part of a check list or are you exploring?
The north rim of the Grand Canyon is spectacular with significantly less people than the south rim. Sequoia/Kings Canyon has some nice redwoods, however you can see nice redwoods at Big Trees SP outside of Arnold, CA on Hwy 4 with less people. Great scenery and places to camp along Ebbets pass (hwy 4), Sonora pass (hwy 108), and Tioga pass (hwy 120).
While the valley of Yosemite is impressive, the Sierra NF just south of there, has great views, hikes and lots of places to camp with significantly less people (east of the town of North Fork, minarets rd and FS 81 toward Squaw Dome and Mammoth Pool). If you do go to Kings Canyon, nice dispersed camping can be found further into the Sequoia NF in the Buck Rock area (east of hwy 198).
Around San Francisco it is a zoo also, that is why I moved to a place with 7 million less people. Just north of the SFO airport is the county Oyster Point Marina in South San Francisco. You can park there for 72 hours. Most of the parks fill up Thursday and Friday night. If you are there mid week, the
San Mateo County Parks are nice (Huddard and Sam McDonald). If you are into stealth, there are a lot of hiking
Trail Heads in the Bay Area that make great places to overnight. A nice one is on the way from San Jose to Livermore (via hwy 130 and mines rd). This road goes over Mt Hamilton before dropping into a very empty area and eventually into Livermore. Just up the road from the Salt Creek campground on the west side. Mt Hamilton has an observatory at the top worth checking out with nice exhibits inside and with great views of the south bay outside.
Tahoe might be worth a day trip from reno/sparks on Hwy 431 past the Mt Rose ski area. If you have the time heading to Sparks, take hwy 49 vs I-80 over the Sierra and stay in the Gold Lakes area before going over Yuba pass. While popular it won’t have anything like that of the places in the tahoe basin.
What enables you to find all these places are having a good mapping program running on your laptop or if you have good eyes on a tablet or mobile device. You are never lost, just not where you want to be :B. Down load everything as reception isn’t great once out of the major towns. Aside from the
Forest Service and its nice maps and dispersed and developed campgrounds. There is also the BLM which also has various
National Monuments and other recreational areas for camping in the west, as well. The
BLM District Offices ( under “our Offices / Centers) have maps and local recreation resources that most over look (three new BLM CG that a lightly used east of Hollister, CA that make a more pleasant journey into the central valley. Plus, these offices and FS district ranger stations are a good source of information about roads and route conditions. If you add their location to your mapping program and the downloaded satellite data, you can have lots of choices where to stay in either developed CG or boondocking if the CG is full, by going further down the FS or BLM road and finding a nice spot for yourself.
Enjoy your trip.
