We may not have been traveling with Charley through Steinbeck country, but we were traveling with our 14-year-old twins, Scott and Jennifer, as the family headed off to Northern California this past spring. We wanted to spend spring break finishing up our "city tour" of the past year, which included D.C., New York, Chicago, and now San Francisco. To round out our Northern California trip, we planned to drive a section of Pacific Coast Highway from Monterey to San Francisco-about 110 miles of scenic beauty that the kids had not yet experienced.

As many times as my wife, Sue, and I have been to the area for business, we still were thrilled to see Big Sur and Monterey again. Darcy at Hideaways set us up with a couple of perfect hotels. We wanted family-friendly places that were of high quality and also reasonably priced. The two she suggested, Monterey Plaza Hotel & Spa on Cannery Row and Argonaut Hotel in San Francisco, hit all those marks. Both were in great locations for all the stuff we wanted to do, had good service and pleasant staff, and were very well maintained.

May/June 2013