Photo by Damian Gadal

Traveling to AMEREM

AMEREM 2018 is being held at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), which is approximately 10 miles west of the City of Santa Barbara, California.   It is located on the Pacific Ocean between the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Access to AMEREM is best through the Santa Barbara airport (SBA), which has the most commuter flights through Los Angeles (LAX) and San Francisco (SFO), although non-stop flights through Denver, and Phoenix are also available.  There is one flight per day from Seattle, Portland and Dallas.  The Santa Barbara airport is 1.5 miles from UCSB.

For those who wish to drive from Los Angeles airport (LAX), the airport is located 105 miles south and east of UCSB and driving time is about 2-1/2 hours due to LA traffic (using Interstate Highway 405 to the US Highway 101).  At busy times this can stretch to 4 hours.

For those who wish to drive from the San Francisco airport (SFO), the airport is located 317 miles north of UCSB (using US Highway 101), and the driving time is approximately 5 hours (although it can be longer if one leaves the airport during heavy traffic times in San Francisco).

It should be noted that many visitors like to visit both the LA area and the San Francisco area, and many long-haul flights from Europe and Asia fly to both airports.  In addition most rental car companies do not charge mileage fees with their rentals, so it is possible to fly into one of the cities, come to AMEREM and then continue on to visit one of the other cities.  It should be noted that the Big Sur Highway south of Monterey, California is still closed (due to a damaged bridge and a mud slide), but it may open toward the end of the summer.  One should check the road situation before trying to make this drive.  Of course the main highway (US Highway 101) is open.