Ventura

Ventura in California is about 60-70 miles north of Los Angeles on the Pacific Coast Highway, US-101, depending where you start from. It should be an hour or so's drive, but that depends on the time of day. There's a lot of traffic into LA in the mornings, and out again in the afternoons, which can slow you up.

Ventura has miles of beautiful sandy beaches, lots of good eating in fine-dining restaurants, some outstanding hotels and inns, access to the Channel Islands National Park, an old Mission, an enjoyable museum with an excellent collection of Native American items – it's an almost perfect vacation destination, or place to overnight if driving the Pacific Coast Highway. What's not to like?

WHAT TO SEE AND DO IN VENTURA
Channel Islands National Park
The harbour at Ventura is where you can take a boat to go across to the beautiful and unusual Channel Islands National Park. First go to the Park Headquarters and Visitor Center at 1901 Spinnaker Drive in Ventura, and check out the different islands, what they have to offer, and what ranger-led activities are on offer. You'll need to check the boat schedules as they do vary according to the season, days of the week, which islands they go to, and so on.

Mission San Bueneventura
211 E. Main St
This beautiful mission was the 9th and last of the California missions to be established by the Blessed Junipero Serra, and is still an active Catholic church today. It was founded in 1782 although the present buildings date from 1815 after the original structures were affected by several earthquakes and a tidal wave. The mission is only small so a visit won't take long, but it's charming and definitely worth seeing.

The Museum of Ventura County
Check the website for the latest address details, as the museum has been on the move lately. It does have quite a varied collection, and puts on exhibitions featuring contemporary as well as past artists and photographers. They also have a good collection of artefacts from the local Native American people, the Chumash Indians, as well as other Native American people from the area.

Whale Watching
See the Whale Watching in California page.

WHERE TO STAY
Crowne Plaza Ventura Beach
The historic Pierpont Inn

FURTHER INFORMATION
Contact the Ventura Convention and Visitors Bureau

Custom Search

SBI!

Popular Pages
The most popular pages on Pacific Coast Highway Travel right now are:

Drive the Pacific Coast Highway
Whale Watching in California
Where to Stay on the PCH
Pacific Coast Highway Maps

PCH Hotels Guide

Pacific Coast Highway Hotels Guide 2011

To help you in choosing your Pacific Coast Highway hotel, guesthouse, inn, bed-and-breakfast, resort, motel or other accommodations, we've prepared our Pacific Coast Highway Hotels Guide ebook. In it we do mini-reviews of accommodations along the Highway, from Seattle to San Diego, through Washington, Oregon, and California.

For the 2011 edition we added new hotels, including a special 50-hotel section covering California’s wine country of Napa, Sonoma, and Paso Robles - by far the most popular diversion from the PCH drive. In all there are over 200 hotels listed, complete with 8 pages of color maps showing the towns where our recommended hotels can be found. There are both alphabetical and geographical indexes, helping you plan your journey.

We also include color photos of all the hotels that are our Personal Favorites. Here's the link to
read more about our ebook guide to Pacific Coast Highway hotels

Or you can buy it here for $2.99:

KINDLE EDITION
The Hotels Guide is also available but without the maps and color photos in the US Kindle Store for $4.99 and in the UK Kindle Store at a price based on the US price.

NOOK EDITION
The guide is also available at Barnes and Noble for the Nook.

PAPERBACK EDITION
If you want a printed edition without color photos and with only black and white maps, it costs $8.99 at the Amazon US store.

PCH Hotels Guide app

We've also published our PCH Hotels Guide as an app in the Apple Store.
You can buy it here and
read about it here.