Best CA road map?

[Mdcastle]

What's the best California road map that's currently in print? I understand that whatever official tourist maps there are for California are vastly inferior to commericial maps. I have a copy of the Benchmark map, and while it's nice that it show's topography it's kind of useless for driving or planning a road trip since it doesn't show distances. One that just covered the Bay area to Oregon would be find for my purposes, and  I'd also be interested if there's a good regional map that shows Sacremento to the Bay area.

[CentralCAroadgeek]

I'm no expert in the differences in map maker brands, but the Rand McNally map and the AAA map aren't that bad. I'm just saying my Rand McNally atlas since I have the ones that shows terrain...

[mapman1071]

Thomas Brothers.

[KEK Inc.]

Thomas Brothers.

Agreed, but it got bought out by Rand McNally in the 90s, and Rand McNally started messing with its format in 2005.   Now it's not even that unique compared to a normal Rand McNally map, and I don't really like Rand McNally's coloring scheme. 



Thomas Guide also used state shields in California, Arizona and Nevada.  They don't do it in other states that I'm aware of, though.

[gonealookin]

The CSAA Sectional and Regional Maps are still listed as available in the Travel --> Plan a Road Trip section at calstate.aaa.com.

For the Bay Area to Oregon, the Sectional Maps (scale 1 inch:9 miles) you want would be:
1.  Central California - Bay Area to Lake Tahoe.  Covers the area from a Monterey-Fresno line on the south to Fort Bragg-Willows-Oroville-Reno on the north.
2.  Northern California.  Covers Fort Bragg-Reno up to Medford-Klamath Falls-Lakeview.

The Regional Maps (scale 1 inch:3 miles) for the Bay Area and Sacramento are:
1.  San Francisco Bay.  From Santa Rosa on the north to Vacaville and Tracy on the east to San Jose on the south.
2.  Gold Country.  Covers most of the Central Valley from Yuba City to Chowchilla and the adjacent Sierra foothills.

These maps were produced by the old CSAA cartographic department as recently as 2007.  I'm not sure what the updating process has been since then.

[agentsteel53]

I have a copy of the Benchmark map, and while it's nice that it show's topography it's kind of useless for driving or planning a road trip since it doesn't show distances.

I really, really like the Benchmark because it seems to be accurate with regard to its "paved" vs "good dirt" vs "bad dirt" classifications.  I don't think I've ever noticed a mistake in a downward direction (aka "oh crap, this is dirt, not paved"). 

as for planning a road trip, I usually just ask Google Maps to come up with a distance and use that as a first estimate given that I may or may not take the routing it recommends.