Sadly, DEC's work has dictated that our vacation must be postponed. Thankfully, it's only by a couple of weeks: instead of leaving next Tuesday, we're taking off on the 24th, just before Memorial Day. (And just after we join the group for Prince Caspian on Friday the 23rd!)

More interestingly, we've decided to ditch the airplanes and simply drive. The twist is instead of taking the long and intensely boring trip down I-5 to Fresno, we're going to take a leisurely drive down the coastal route, which I've never done before. (I think the fam went to a few CA beaches back when I was a kid, but I have only the vaguest of memories.)
Anyway, our journey will begin in Bandon, continue down to Northern CA, head for San Francisco, then loop back through Fresno, Yosemite, and Sacramento. If time permits we will hit Bend and/or Crater Lake on the way back home.
/>The goal is to drive no more than 4-5 hours / day.

I'm really looking forward to it: I've taken the I-5 route so many times that it's burned into the brain and I really never wish to do it again. I have these memories of doing the entire 17 hours from Portland to Fresno in one day, and having to drive either the scary bit over Shasta (in the 8 passenger van!) or the mind-numbing part down the grapevine while everyone else in the car slept and I tried not to. Ugh! We'll still end up taking a good portion of I-5 on the way home, but even so we'll split it up with stops in southern Oregon.
I think we'll end up driving longer than DEC hopes, and we Might be trying to cram too many stops into a roughly 10 day trip, but it's still a good framework, and I'm definitely looking forward to it!

Anyway, for those of you in the SF area we're looking to hit it either Memorial Day or the Tuesday after depending on how long we decide to meander on the northern coast.