My family was recently hosted by Visit California to see three Central California Coast destinations: San Luis Obispo (which locals call SLO), Oxnard and Santa Barbara. We only had four nights to visit all of these destinations but if you have more or less time you can adapt this trip or even visit one or two of the destinations alone. As someone who travels frequently from Seattle to California, a weekend might be all you need to get an adventure that feels very different from where we live. Each of these destinations we visited recently have airports or airports nearby and easy car rentals. You can pop in on a Friday, soak up the sunshine (99% of the time) and leave on Sunday refreshed.
San Luis Obispo
If you can get to San Luis Obispo on a Thursday night you’ll be here for SLO’s famous farmer’s market. You’ll see yummy things grilling, find local products and produce and hear live music too. Make sure you check for deals before you visit SLO-in some months like in November and January there might be incentives to eat out at local restaurants and shop local shops and we found this out by checking out the VisitSLO website. (When we visited in January there was a promotion where you show your restaurant receipts totalling $100 to get a $25 gift card to another local merchant.)
We loved our visit to San Luis Obispo (SLO) and found some cute shops like Junk Girls and Idlewild Floral. We ate delicious toasts and Acai bowls at Seeds, picked up a mug and lattes a few times at Scout Coffee (it has the same name as our pup!) and had the most exquisite coffee service at Lokum where we also ate Turkish Delight for the first time. We enjoyed a two-hour window of epic sunshine that we enjoyed outdoors overlooking grapevines at Baileyana winery. And we tried a few desserts from the iconic Madonna Inn.
We also stayed at the Wayfarer in SLO and our teenagers really enjoyed the comfortable connecting rooms and the funky vibe of this hotel.
Oxnard California
We were initially hoping to use Oxnard as a homebase for a getaway to the Channel Islands National Park with Island Packers Cruises. There is a really adorable local fox that lives on one of the islands that reminds me a bit of the quokkas we saw years ago on Rottnest Island in Perth, Australia.
But because of unusual weather it was too difficult to get to the Channel Islands this time so we actually got to see a lot more Oxnard than we originally planned- we attempted the Taco Trail! We also stopped by the Collection at Riverpark Shopping Center and tried a robotic cotton candy machine. If we had more time we might have tried the bowling there too. We found a farmer’s market near our hotel and went to the Channel Islands Museum. We had a really great meal at the Haven at Whitesails and a fabulous breakfast at Ox and Ocean.
Our hotel the Zachari Dunes on Mandalay Beach was absolutely relaxing and right on the beach as well. Even though the weather wasn’t great we still could storm watch and when we saw a short break in the weather we could easily get outside and enjoy the beach quickly too. One day we’ll get to the Channel Islands, but it was really cool to visit Oxnard and we still have a lot of taco places to try next time we come back.
Santa Barbara
On our very last day of our trip we finally woke to a sunny day and we didn’t want to waste a drop. We walked the beach. We rode bikes on the beach. We breakfasted outdoors at Chads Cafe. We grabbed a few coffees from Dune and Dart coffee. We tried an epic coffee from Caje coffee that I’ll want to come back for one day. (click through for the video-it came with “fire” on the side). Our stay was really comfortable in a family-friendly two bedroom apartment-style suite just 5 minutes away from everything.
Two bakeries I wanted to visit were closed on Mondays so it’s important to know the days places are open. Alessia Patisserie just seems dreamy and someone told me I had to try Hook and Press donuts so don’t miss out if you head to Santa Barbara too.
It was so easy to drop our car off at the car rental drop-off at Santa Barbara Airport and this was a really adorable airport too.
Santa Barbara also sent us off with a rainbow as we got on our plane. I can’t imagine a better way to end a lovely vacation weekend.
Have you ever been to the Central California Coast? Feel free to message through email or Instagram if you want more tips.
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)
One thought on “An easy weekend getaway from Seattle to the Central California Coast”
Comments are closed.