Big Sur the top road trip route around the world, study says
The sun sets over the ocean and the cypress trees at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Wednesday, May 24, 2006.
Sacramento Bee Staff Photo
The United States has some of the most popular road trip destinations in the world, according to a social media study, with one California coastal spot landing the top spot.
Motorcycle Insurance, a company in the United Kingdom, looked into the most popular road trip routes across the globe.
It created the ranking based on data from Instagram hashtags, global average monthly Google searches and TikTok views. The data collected was from July 2022 and 28 road trip routes were analyzed for the study.
The iconic Big Sur, a stretch along the Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Lucia Mountains, landed on the top 10 list.
Big Sur is known for its coastline, parks, hiking trails, restaurants and retail.
According to the study, the central coast scored the highest in all ranking categories with over 1.4 million Instagram hashtags, more than 360,000 global average monthly Google searches and 90 million TikTok views.
Ocean Drive, Badlands National Park and Columbia River Gorge in the U.S. also made it on the top 10 list at four, five, and six, respectively.
This story was originally published August 16, 2022 10:28 AM.
Hanh Truong is a reporter on The Sacramento Bee’s utility desk. She was previously a freelance journalist, covering education and culture for PBS SoCal and music for buzzbands.la.
