I understand that the subject might look a little bit inflammatory but bear with me.
I am former California resident, I spent more than 14 years living in Bay Area and up to very recently considered it my home and mentally/culturally still identify myself as Californian. I left California more than seven years ago and have been living in South East Asia since that.
After moving to SEA I, my wife and our family friend just returned from my first California vacation, spending about eight days there - Tahoe, Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon NPs. Then, coast - Cambria/Big Sur/Monterey/Half Moon Bay and arrival to Bay Area before flying out.
If I look at expenses, it came out as $500 per day spent which included just rental car/gas, lodging and food while travelling (airline tickets were bought using miles). Note - it did not include lodging in Bay Area, we stayed with friends. And these expenses were on low side - I used discount codes for car rental, we stayed outside of national parks at motels and 1-2* properties and instead of dining at restaurants, we grabbed food at supermarket deli sections or made sandwiches on our own.
So for three people, it was $3000 for 6 days. And this was my second most expensive vacation (per day expenses) after New Zealand. For $3000 you can have 3br villa with pool in Bali for
two weeks, breakfast and lunch included and money will be left for activities - you can rent a car with driver for 10h for $30, and food cost fractions of the US prices. The same applies to pretty much anywhere in SEA region.
Or take South Africa for example - 3br home on AirBnB next to entrance of Kruger NP or Cape Town suburbs costs like $90/day, compare it to one room at $250/night at Motel 8 next to SFO or $500 per room at a lodge inside Yosemite or Sequoia. Car rental costs 1/3 of US prices without outrageous one way rental fees. As for food - the best steak I had in my life was at outskirts of town Hazyview next to Kruger.
Now, I get it - you don't have Yosemite, General Sherman Tree anywhere in the world and if you have not seen them, you
have to go to California to see/experience them. But the question for me to ask myself after this trip was - does California worth the hassle and money?
Answer to me is - no. There are plenty of places in this world where I have not been and where I can get much better performance/price ratio for my money compared to California.
So my question to the audience is: if you travelled to California for vacation and - this is important - it was
not your first time, did you have a feeling that the travel did not generate the return you've expected?