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Sounds awesome, although I'm sorry that you missed out on the California coastal redwoods. My earliest family vacation memories are of staying in a cabin on the Smith River (the only undammed river in the west, allegedly) near Crescent City. We went there many summers in a row, until I was about 10, I think, and I went back a couple of times in my early 20s. It's a beautiful place (and home of the Forest Moon of Endor). But the roads have always been tricky. Back then it was negotiating with massive lumber trucks--and it might still be.

Side note: in NorCal, when we hear people refer to freeways with a "the" in front of it, we think those are LA/SoCal people, as in "the 5," "the 110," or, as above, "the 101." Here, I take 101 to 92, then south on 1 (to get to the coast that Fearless and his daughters visited). In LA, they would take "the 101 to the 92, then south on the 1." I'm curious if that's more common nationwide than I realized (referring to the freeway with a "the" in front of it)?

I would never tell someone in Austin, regardless of whether or not they're from LA, that I'm going to take "the 35 to the 183 to the 620."  

My one and only visit to SoCal many years ago, I heard that a lot.  You won't hear that in the South, or in any part of Texas I've frequented. 

Another odd thing to my ears when I was there--although this may not be specific to LA dwellers, since you just used it--they called interstate highways the freeway.  Freeway is not a term I'm used to hearing.  People in the places I've lived say "take the interstate," or "take I-10," but they won't say "take the freeway."