Los Angeles to Monterey road trip: 11 stops worth the detour

Hollywood's oldest restaurant, open since 1919, a red-jacketed old-school grill famed for martinis and classic continental fare. Order: Flannel cakes.

A Mexican bakery-cafe on Soledad's main drag that works before the west-side Pinnacles entrance — pan dulce, breakfast plates, and grab-and-go fuel for a hot trail day.

Robert Louis Stevenson supposedly used this cypress-and-granite headland as a model for Treasure Island — sea otters raft in the kelp beds of Whalers Cove and harbor seals haul out on rock shelves just offshore, three miles south of Carmel, in what's often called the crown jewel of the whole state park system.

Household-name Sichuan spot for tingly Chengdu classics. (San Gabriel Valley)

Simon Rodia’s 99-ft mosaic spires

Nineteen unmarked numbered gates along two miles of highway are the only clue this 2,939-acre park exists — pull off at Gate 8 and a bluff loop leads to Whale Peak, a name that isn't decorative: gray whales pass close enough here in winter that rangers run scheduled watch outings.

Gold standard of Bakersfield Basque dining since 1954, serving the full family-style spread of soup, beans, salad and rotating entree. Order: Lamb stew.

Bixby's quieter, less-crowded sibling arch: a 1932 open-spandrel concrete bridge a mile north, one of seven matching "Big Sur Arches" spans, with a small roadside pullout that gets a fraction of Bixby's traffic for nearly the same view.

The single most-photographed pulloff in California: park on the ocean side just south of the 1932 Bixby Creek Bridge and you get the entire 714-foot concrete arch framed against open Pacific — the shot on a thousand postcards, and it's a free two-minute stop.