Planning your trip: part 1

Since I am at a conference all this week, and I don't know how much control I will have over my time, I'm preparing a series of "details" posts. Today's topic is how to get here.

We live on California's beautiful Central Coast, in San Luis Obispo county (the SLOCoast), where the weather is among the world's finest. On the other hand, we're not located on the beaten track. Frankly, the best way to get here is to drive...and if you haven't driven down/up the California coast from SF/LA to LA/SF, it is something you should do once in your life. Our house is in a golf course community (more on that in a later post) about equidistant between highway 1 (the Pacific Coast Highway, or PCH in the current trendspeak) and highway 101 in the southern part of the county.

The three closest airports, for those coming from a distance, are (in proximity order):
San Luis Obispo Airport: SBP (about 30 minutes)
Santa Maria Airport: SMX (about 30 minutes)
Santa Barbara Airport: SBA (about 90 minutes)

If you want to get as close as possible by plane, I suggest SBP. But both SBP, and the smaller SBX, are mostly served by turboprop planes, and, essentially only two carriers: United and USAir, which flys (at the moment) two small jets in each (week)day from Phoenix. There are a limited number of seats each day, so if you plan to fly to either of these airports, I strongly suggest you book early.

The alternative, for those who have time, is to fly into LAX (about 2.5 hours away) Long Beach (3 hours) or Burbank (2.5 hours), or any of the Bay Area airports: SFO (3.5 hours), SJC (about 3 hours), or OAK (3.5 hours). NOTE: all driving times are Vern at the wheel, with no traffic.

More tomorrow...