We took the Caravan to Monterey Bay for the Fourth of July weekend. Thursday the 2nd through Sunday the 5th, three nights, just Monica, Asher, and me. We camped at the Laguna Seca Recreation Area, ran 17-Mile Drive, and spent a day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

I’ll say up front that this was the best trip we’ve taken so far. I also had nothing to do with putting it together. Monica planned every piece of it, and the closest I came to contributing was showing up and driving. There’s something in that, and I’ll get to it at the end.

The Route

The northern way around. West out of Bakersfield on CA-46, across I-5 at Lost Hills, over the grade into Paso Robles, then north on US-101 through King City and Salinas. From Salinas it’s CA-68 southwest toward Monterey, and the raceway entrance comes off 68 before you get to town. Roughly 220 miles door to camp.

It’s an easy tow for most of the way. US-101 is divided highway through the Salinas Valley and CA-46 is a straightforward run once you’re past Lost Hills. Nothing about this one asks much of the truck.

The part worth knowing is the last quarter mile. Once you turn off CA-68 into the raceway, the road climbs to the entrance gate at about a 16 percent grade, and it’s a short, steep pull. Past the gate there’s a hard turn to get up into the campgrounds. It’s all paved and none of it is dangerous, but a 16 percent grade with a loaded trailer behind you is not what you expect to find at the end of a highway drive. Know it’s coming and you’ll be fine.

The Campsite

Grand Prix campground, Laguna Seca Recreation Area, off CA-68 between Salinas and Monterey. Site 122.

Our site was primitive, which here means no electric and no sewer. Every site has non-potable water at it, which is fine for washing but not for drinking, so bring your own or fill up before you come up the hill. None of that mattered much to us. The Caravan runs off its own battery and solar, so a primitive site is a cheaper site and nothing else.

What makes this place worth the drive is that you are not camping near a racetrack. You are camping on one. Monica told me we’d be staying next to Laguna Seca and left out exactly how next to it we’d be, and I didn’t figure it out until we were climbing that grade to the gate. Every site up there is good. Some lean toward views of the southern mountains, some lean toward the track, and there’s no bad draw in the deck.

The other thing is how much of the property you can just walk. On the south side, the area between turns six and seven is essentially unrestricted right up to the fence line, and for some events it’s a designated camping area.

If you want the Corkscrew, and you do, check out the video for some simple instructions for how to get there. Once there, the vantage point puts you right on top of the Corkscrew, which is an on and off camber chicane with a steep elevation drop and the single reason most people know this track’s name. Hang around the bottom of the course long enough and somebody will get sideways in front of you.

What to know before you go: the Grand Prix campground is a seasonal, dirt-pad campground open roughly April through October, so it’s a summer and shoulder-season option only. Reservations run through the recreation area’s line at 888-588-2267 and there’s a small per-site reservation fee. There’s a dump station on the property. There’s also a rifle range and an airport nearby, so daytime noise is part of the deal, and obviously the track itself makes noise when something’s running on it. Monterey and Cannery Row are about 15 minutes down 68.

What Worked

Monica planned the whole trip. She built an itinerary with three real activities in it and put us somewhere that made all three a short drive. The track, 17-Mile Drive, and the aquarium are all within about 20 minutes of camp. I didn’t have to solve a single logistics problem the entire weekend, and I’ve never been able to say that about a trip before.

The campsite was one of the activities. Most of the time you pick a campground so you have somewhere to sleep near the thing you came to do. This time the campground was the thing. We spent hours walking the fence line and the overlooks without ever getting in the truck, which meant the track fit into gaps in the schedule instead of needing a slot of its own.

A primitive site at a prime location didn’t cost too much. No hookups is a real consideration for a lot of rigs and it just isn’t one for us. We booked the cheapest tier available and gave up nothing but a sewer connection we don’t use anyway. If you’re shopping this campground and you’re off-grid capable, don’t pay for the hookup sites.

Three activities that had nothing to do with each other. A racetrack, a scenic coastal drive, and an aquarium is a strange list, and that’s exactly why the weekend didn’t get repetitive.

What Didn’t

I showed up to all three activities cold. This is the one I’d change. Because I didn’t plan any of it, I also didn’t do any research, and I walked into the track, the drive, and the aquarium knowing essentially nothing about them. That cost us. At the track I found the good viewing spots by wandering into them, and I’ve got no idea what I might have walked past. On 17-Mile Drive I’d heard secondhand that you can see Pebble Beach Golf Links from the roadside and I was working it out as we went, along with many other iconic spots on the drive. At the aquarium we covered ground more or less at random. Every one of those would have been better with an hour of reading beforehand. Monica handled the plan, and the part that was still mine to do was learning what we were walking into. I didn’t do it.

We went to the aquarium on the Fourth of July weekend. It was packed. I asked a staff member about it and they said a regular weekend is noticeably calmer. Nothing about the day was ruined, but you’re moving through it at the pace of the crowd instead of your own, and with a toddler that matters more than it would otherwise. If the aquarium is the anchor of your trip, don’t put it on a holiday, unless you want to of course.

What We Filmed

Video’s at the top. It opens at camp with the track running in the background, then covers the campground layout and where the good viewing spots are, including the directions to the Corkscrew overlook. There’s a long 17-Mile Drive segment that’s just footage and music with no narration over it, which was on purpose. That drive doesn’t need me talking through it. The last third is the aquarium: the tanks, the divers, the touch zones, and the history exhibit near the entrance about the bay’s sardine canneries, which is a better story than it sounds like.

Off the Trail

Here’s the part I keep circling back to.

I didn’t plan this trip. Not one piece of it. Monica picked the place, booked the site, built the itinerary, and told me where to be. And it’s the best trip we’ve taken so far.

That should be a straightforward good thing and it isn’t quite, because planning is normally where I live. I’m the one who runs the fuel math, calls the ranger district, and drops the waypoints. It’s how I contribute, and if I’m being straight about it, it’s also how I stay in control of something. This time I had none of that, and instead of spending the weekend managing a plan I spent it inside one.

The obvious lesson would be that I should let go of the wheel more often. I’m not sure that’s the whole of it, because my one real regret from the weekend is a planning regret. I wish I’d known more about where we were going. So it isn’t that preparation is the problem.

I think it’s closer to this: there’s a difference between preparing for a trip and owning the itinerary. I’ve been treating those as the same job for a long time. This weekend somebody else owned it, I could have prepared for it and didn’t, and it still came out better than the trips I’ve run start to finish. That’s worth sitting with for a while.

Notes for Next Time

  • Grand Prix campground is seasonal, roughly April through October. Book through 888-588-2267.
  • If you’re off-grid capable, book primitive. The hookups aren’t worth the upcharge here.
  • Water at the sites is non-potable. Fill your tank before you come up the hill.
  • The climb from CA-68 to the entrance gate is about a quarter mile at 16 percent, with a hard turn after the gate. Not a problem, just don’t let it surprise you.
  • Corkscrew overlook: past turns six and seven, road off to the right, up the steep hill, veer left to the stop sign and the authorized vehicle only sign. Open except during large events.
  • 17-Mile Drive is $12.50 per vehicle and the gate fee is reimbursed with a $35 purchase at a Pebble Beach Resorts restaurant. Gates run sunrise to sunset.
  • Skip the aquarium on a holiday weekend. Staff says regular weekends are much calmer.
  • Read up on every stop before we go, even when I’m not the one planning. One hour would have made three activities better.
  • Monterey and Cannery Row are 15 minutes away if we want a night out of camp next time.