Best Traditional American California Tour: Yosemite UNESCO 1984, Redwood UNESCO 1980, Joshua Tree 1994, Pacific Coast Highway, Big Sur, Monterey, Hearst Castle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and the Deep Heritage Route
Browse more guides: United States travel | Americas destinations Best Traditional American California Tour: Yosemite UNESCO 1984, Redwood UNESCO 1980, Joshua Tree 1994, Pacific Coast Highway, Big Sur, Monterey, Hearst Castle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and the Deep Heritage Route TL;DR California is the only US state where you can stand under the world's tallest living tree at breakfast, photograph the world's largest single-stem tree by lunch, drive a clifftop highway at sunset and look up at the deepest sky on the continent before bed. The state covers 423,970 square kilometres, holds roughly 39 million residents and runs the world's fifth-largest economy on its own, ahead of most G7 countries. It owns nine inscribed UNESCO World Heritage properties or biosphere reserves when you count Yosemite (1984), Redwood (1980) and Channel Islands, plus a string of national parks that read like a geology textbook: Yosemite with El Capitan at 2,307 metres and Half Dome at 2,693 ...