California is basically one long road trip wearing a state costume, and HGTV just narrowed it down to four routes worth adding to your bucket list. I've driven chunks of most of these, and the list is solid. Not perfect, but solid.

The obvious pick is Highway 1 down the coast. If you've read me before, you know my stance: drive it southbound so the ocean stays on your right the whole way, no median between you and the cliff. Big Sur gets all the postcards, and it earns them, but the stretches north of San Francisco through Mendocino are quieter and, some days, even better. Fog in the morning, sun by two, sea stacks the whole way.

The Redwood Highway up through Humboldt is the one I'd push hardest if you've never done it. Driving through those groves messes with your sense of scale. You'll roll down the window going 40 past a tree wider than your car and just go quiet.

The list also covers desert country. Death Valley in the cooler months is strange in a way photos can't quite capture, all cracked salt flats and pastel badlands. Just take water. More water than you think. I once ran embarrassingly low on a spring drive through there and it scared me straight on hydration forever.

And then there's Route 66, which surprised me a little until I thought about it. The Mother Road's western leg ends in California, so the highway that carried generations of road trippers finishes at the Pacific. You don't have to do the whole cross-country run to get it. Just the California end, landing at the ocean, is a proper trip.

The thing is, you could make a list like this with eight or twelve California routes and fight about the cuts for a week. Death Valley to Joshua Tree. The 395 along the Eastern Sierra when the aspens turn. Lassen. The whole Lost Coast. Four is a starting point, not a verdict.

But if you take one route off this list, make it the redwoods. Some places you see, and some you feel, and those groves are firmly in the second group.