- 20 mistakes to avoid on your trip to California.
I'm Chris and I'm joined by special guest, Josh
from the YouTube channel, California Through My lens.
He is the foremost expert on California
that I know.
- I think I have to fight you for that though, right?
- All right, we can arm wrestle later.
- Yeah.
- So Josh, what do you think is the number one mistake
people make when they come to California?
- Yeah, I'd say the number one mistake by far
is that people try to do too much
when they're visiting the state.
I mean it's like 14 hours from the southern portion
all the way to the northern portion
just driving without stopping.
So trying to see too much is crazy.
I would recommend you focus on an area.
So maybe you do a trip to Northern California for a week,
do a trip to Southern California for a week.
You see LA, Joshua Tree, all these great stuff.
But that way you're not trying to just drive
all over the state and see everything in one trip.
- Yeah, that's a great tip, Josh
'cause I think so many people spend so much of their time
just driving and in their cars
and not actually seeing the state.
And by the way, we're recording this video
in Huntington Beach, Surf City, USA
where we're also doing a vlog for Josh's channel.
So you can check that out a little bit later
to see more of HB.
But you're gonna see some as we shoot this video as well.
The second mistake, speaking of beaches
that I think people make when they come to California
is they think the beach is warm during Spring Break.
April, May, March.
If you come during Spring Break, it's really gonna be cold.
The water's gonna be cold, you're gonna need a wet suit
if you go in the water and in the morning,
it's gonna be cloudy.
We have this thing called May Gray
that even extends to June Gloom.
Josh, have you ever come to the beach
and found no sun and cold waters?
- Oh yeah, all the time.
I was gonna say I don't think I've been in the water
in like, a decade.
I mean, when you're younger, it's the greatest thing ever
but the water's cold here.
- It is. It is chilly.
Yeah, so prepare to have a little bit of brr
when you come to the beach.
- Another mistake people make about temperature
is visiting Death Valley in the summer.
- You know, it's called Death Valley for a reason, Josh.
- Yeah it gets really hot there.
It's one of the hottest places in North America.
Couple years ago, it was like 128 degrees.
If you wanna visit Death Valley in the summer,
just go turn on your oven, open up the door,
you can get a little close to it,
that's kind of what it feels like to visit Death Valley.
- Yeah, it's actually really nice in the winter
but people think I wanna go there in summer
'cause I want to experience the world record heat.
Trust me, you don't.
That's when your tires melt and that is when people die.
- Not worth it, - Yeah, it is not worth it.
The fourth mistake people make when coming to California
is they go to San Francisco
and they don't bring warm weather clothes.
San Francisco is cold pretty much all year round.
Maybe not all day all the time
but if you're there for a week, chances are good five days
of that week, you're gonna be cold because of the fog.
The pea-soup fog in San Francisco.
- Yeah, there's been many times
where I've planned a trip somewhere in California
and I don't even check the weather and then I get there
and it's freezing and I have to buy a sweatshirt.
I have lots of sweatshirts I've had to buy from all over.
California can get cold as well so, prepare for that.
- The fifth common mistake people make coming to California
is referring to San Francisco as San Fran.
Don't do it.
It's San Francisco, it's SF, it's not San Fran
and it's definitely not Frisco.
How do I know this?
I made a travel guide on San Francisco
and in the thumbnail, I put San Fran
'cause I thought that would be kinda cute.
And you know what?
Everybody from San Francisco was like,
"Chris, it's not San Fran."
And I'm like, it was the short in the thumbnail.
Don't do it, don't do it.
Josh, what else should people not do
when they come to California?
- The next mistake is that people need to book in advance
for basically everything that you're gonna do.
It used to be back in the day that you could show up
and you could get a campsite, no problem.
But now, you gotta book it six months in advance.
You gotta get on at 6 AM and be refreshing the page
in order to get the busiest campsite.
Plus you need to get a reservation
to go into Yosemite National Park in the summertime.
So anything you think you wanna do,
be sure to research how to best do those before you come.
- Yeah and even Disneyland, people used to turn up
at Disneyland at the gate and buy tickets but now,
you need a park reservation to visit Disneyland.
Even once you bought the ticket,
you need to make sure you have a reservation
for the specific park for the certain day.
So definitely a good California vacation
is a planned California vacation.
- Got a lot of surfers behind me for the next one.
And that is not budgeting enough money for your trip.
California is an expensive place.
Everything you've heard about it is probably true.
The gas is one of the most expensive in the nation here.
We have a lot of tourist cities
so they can be really expensive
with resort fees and with hotel fees.
So budget more money
than you think you're probably gonna need for your trip.
- Yes.
I had to go to the ATM and and get more money.
The parking in Huntington Beach was more than I thought.
The next mistake people make
when they come to California is they go down
to Tijuana in Mexico just south of San Diego
and they forget their passport.
Because you can leave San Diego
and walk into Tijuana, Mexico without your passport.
They will happily accept you
into Mexico just walking across.
But you know what?
In the United States of America,
they're gonna check your passport coming back in here.
So if you do wanna visit Mexico
on your trip to California, make sure you have a passport
even if you're going across that land border.
- Luckily, I haven't made that mistake before.
- Right, good.
That's why you're here.
- So we moved up from the surfers to the pin wheels
for the next spot and that is that you need to plan
more time than you think you're gonna need
for all the driving that you do in California.
Especially when you're in LA or San Francisco
around rush hour, traffic can basically be a standstill.
It can take you 30 minutes to go one or two miles.
- Yeah and my advice to you would be a lot of people
when they plan their drive times, they just use Google maps
and most people plan their next day like at 10 at night.
And so you're gonna see the traffic
at 10 at night, which isn't that bad.
Use the features in Google maps of depart at or arrive by.
You can check these little boxes
and say depart at 5 PM or arrive by 7 PM.
And then you'll find out it doesn't actually take one hour,
it actually takes three when you're going at traffic time.
The other mistake you shouldn't make
when you come to California is driving slow
in the carpool lane.
So on all of the big interstate freeways here,
the left most lane or lanes is generally the carpool lane.
There's diamonds on it
and that means you gotta have
two or three people in your car
or on some freeways, you gotta pay to get in it.
But that lane is supposed to be the fastest lane
on the freeway.
Don't park it at 65 miles per hour
just because that's the speed limit.
What do you say, people often, I don't mean you, Josh,
but what do other people-
- I can confirm that happens all the time.
People just drive slow and you can't get around them
'cause you can't leave the carpool lane.
That's right, that's right.
- So don't do it 'cause the person's gonna be behind you.
And you can't get in and you can't get out.
And then you're just gonna have a whole bunch of people
that are like three inches from your bumper behind you.
And I don't want that for you.
- All right.
Our next mistake is thinking that the train
is the fastest way to get around.
I know if you came from like a European country
or something, you're used to just taking the train.
Unfortunately, our train in California
is very pretty but not super efficient.
You can take it to get to some of the coastal beach cities
but you can't even take a route
from LA to San Francisco that's direct.
- Yeah, really definitely consider the train a scenic route
and not the quick route.
The one that's most popular for tourists
is Los Angeles to San Diego
because it does pick up in downtown LA
and it does drop off right in downtown San Diego.
So you can consider that route.
Mistake number 12 is not using the subway.
Los Angeles and San Francisco both have underground trains.
Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco in LA,
it's the subway, it runs from downtown LA
through Hollywood up to Universal Studios.
And I've been in downtown Los Angeles and I asked someone
who walked out of a building,
'cause they were working there,
"Hey can you tell me where the entrance to the subway is?"
And you know what Josh?
They just looked at me like I was crazy.
- We have a subway? - Exactly.
Do we have a subway?
- Yeah, and it doesn't go to the airport either.
So do you know that about LA?
But it's San Francisco.
It's very easy to get from the the airport
all the way into downtown.
- Yeah, great point.
Speaking of airports, mistake number 13 is thinking
that Los Angeles and San Francisco
are the only two airports in California.
There are so many more airports in California
that may be so much closer to your destinations.
San Diego has its own airport.
You don't need to fly into Los Angeles to go to San Diego.
Just like 30 miles to the south
of Los Angeles International Airport
is John Wayne Orange County Airport, SNA
That's the one you wanna fly into
if you're going to Disneyland, it's the closest.
And if you're going to San Francisco, 'cause SFO
is foggy all the time, you might wanna consider Oakland
just on the other side of the bay.
Flights are even a little bit cheaper too.
And they're much more on time.
- Yeah, I use all the airports because you can always try
to find something that's cheaper, which is awesome.
And California have so many airports.
Next up, don't miss out on the national parks.
We have some of the best national parks
in the entire country right here in California.
To me, Yosemite is the best national park
in the entire country.
But there's eight others.
There's nine total national parks
and every trip to California should touch on a few of them.
- Yeah.
And I'll say, as someone who grew up in California,
I haven't even been to all of the national parks.
- You haven't?
- I've not been to all of them yet.
Yeah, need to. - Oh my gosh.
You gotta do.
We're gonna stop this video right out.
- That's it. Throw me off the pier.
But in Southern California I really like
in addition to Death Valley, I like Joshua Tree as well.
It just has these like kinda like moon-like trees
that are there.
But, Josh, the people
are going to a few different national parks.
Is there something they should do to help it be cheaper?
Is there a combo ticket they can buy or what?
- Yeah, to piggyback on that,
our next mistake is not buying an annual pass.
If you are going to more than two,
then you should definitely buy an annual pass.
It's about $30 per car to enter Yosemite
or Joshua Tree and it's $80 for National Parks Pass
that lasts for the entire year.
You can go to all the national parks in the United States.
So if you're gonna do it,
it's probably the best way to do it.
- If you buy the National Parks Pass,
do you still need a reservation ticket into the park or?
- Yes you do.
You do have to.
So for Yosemite in the summer,
you have to have a reservation
even if you have a pass, just 'cause it gets so busy.
- Mistake number 16 is going to a snow area
without tire chains.
In California, if you're going to the mountains
in snow season, you need to have tire chains
on your tires if there's snow.
But Josh, you go to a lot of snowy areas.
Do you carry tire chains with you?
- I always have them with me because a few times
I've been in Yosemite,
I've been worried that like, it's gonna snow
and I won't have them and they'll kick me out or whatever.
So they're always in my car.
In the wintertime, not in summer.
- Yeah.
Do you put them on yourself?
- I will, I can.
It takes me a little bit of time always to figure it out,
but I can put them on myself.
- Yeah
So if you have a rental car and you're like,
how do I get tire chains?
You can go places to buy tire chains
and if you can't put tire chains on in the snow areas,
there are people that will put tire chains
on your cars at the big and busy ones.
We once were in Lake Tahoe and we had a rental car.
- That's nice.
- And we didn't have chains
and it snowed when we were there.
And so like eight feet of snow.
And so we went, the hotel actually sold tire chains.
- I Didn't know that.
- And put them on our car.
So there you go.
And then when you get to the bottom of the mountain,
how do you take them off?
Same thing.
We paid somebody at the bottom of the mountain
in the chain area to take if off.
- You don't just leave them on
the whole time you're driving?
- Yeah, (laughs), just that's it.
No, that's a good point.
'Cause in many other places of the world,
you might get winter tires or snow tires
that you do leave on all the time.
But snow chains, you just put on when it's snowy
and when you're on the mountain.
- Well I wanna say that we're in front
of the world's largest surfboard too,
in case you're wondering what that was.
But our next mistake is not eating at In-N-Out Burger.
I know you've probably heard that In-N-Out is overrated
from some person who went to California.
But Quinte Central California is a visit to In-N-Out Burger.
If you come into LA, my favorite one
is the one next to the airport.
It's always busy. - I love that one.
- But you get to see all the airplanes
and I get a number one
which is a double double animal style.
What about you?
- All right.
I also get a double double, but I get it with extra lettuce,
extra tomato and extra spread.
That's what I get on it.
- Who does extra lettuce?
- Yeah, I do.
I do extra lettuce.
I must be like a bunny rabbit.
And then the other tidbit on this surfboard is actually,
this has the world's record
for the world's largest surfboard
that surfed 40 plus people were on this thing.
Surfed for 12 seconds.
We watched the video
in the International Surfing Museum that's right here.
Now, speaking of cool worldly things,
another mistake people make coming to California
is they go to Hollywood Boulevard
thinking they're gonna see movie stars.
And let me tell you, the only stars you're gonna see
in Hollywood are the ones that are in the sidewalk
but not the real ones.
- One time though, I was hiking in Runyon Canyon
and I did see Gerard Butler.
- Did you really?
- Yeah.
But I've been to Hollywood like 700 times
and I've only had one celebrity sighting.
So there you go.
- Runyon Canyon, that's the hike up
to the Hollywood sign, right?
- Yeah, well like in that area, that downtown area.
- Right.
Anyway, you'll see them around.
Hollywood Boulevard is probably the one street
that you won't see them on.
- Very anti-climactic if you're visiting California.
Mistake number 19 is just going
to the major areas of California.
Of course. LA and San Francisco and San Diego
are amazing places that are well worth exploring
but getting outside of those places just a little bit
will show you some true California.
Some places that maybe the tourists don't go
that you'll really love.
Example of that being, even going to Napa is amazing.
You should go to Napa.
But go to Sonoma.
You could go to Paso Robles if you're in the Central Valley.
You go to Temecula if you're in Southern California.
All these places have great wine as well.
And so just trying to see those types of things
while you're in California.
- Yeah for sure.
And I feel like the things you see on the top level
tourism stuff back California are the things
people are trying to sell you.
They're trying to sell you the Hollywood Boulevard,
tour of the stars.
But one of the best tours you can take
if you're in Central California is of the almond blossoms.
I mean, most people don't even know California
has a whole almond blossom season
and they're just as beautiful as the cherry blossoms.
But you wouldn't know because there's nobody selling tours
of the almond blossoms.
So doesn't make people a lot of money.
But it's really beautiful.
So check those little-
- I haven't been to almond blossoms,
but I'm gonna have to go now.
- Yeah, Josh is gonna have to go now, right.
We did a video series there last summer
and it was super awesome.
- Which you can click here and watch Chris's almond video.
- The video of that, right.
And so speaking of clicking places,
the final mistake people make,
number 20 coming to California
is not watching more of Josh's excellent videos
on his channel, California Through My Lens.
Over 400 videos on California.
You'll find that link on the screen
in the description below.
You'll also find a video that Josh and I did this day.
The vlog about Huntington Beach.
We hiked in this place, Bolsa Chica.
So you can watch that if you wanna see more
of the two of us.
- And I would also say
that you gotta watch Chris's videos
because in terms of sheer information,
no one does it better.
You're not gonna find the cinematic drone shots maybe
but you will definitely know how to experience the place
the best way you possibly can if you watch his videos.
- All right.
Well, fellow explorers, as usual,
we won't say goodbye 'cause we'll see you in the next video.