Visiting California's San Andreas Fault

Where can I actually see/touch the San Andreas Fault? I'm visiting California in a month, and have long wanted to visit this famous earthquake fault.
Marsha Beatty
Salt Lake City

Map of the San Andreas system. USGS

Marsha,
The San Andreas fault is visible in many places. You might want to get a copy of this book to serve as your guide: Field Guide to the San Andreas Fault  (Caveat: I haven't read it, and don't know the author.)
The San Andreas is the boundary between the North America and Pacific plates. The fault extends from the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez) northwest for 810 miles across California, from the Salton Sea trough to north of San Francisco, entering the sea south of Fort Bragg. The fault is far longer than that, as it continues into the Pacific Ocean, where it separates the Pacific Plate from the Juan de Fuca Plate.
The fault runs right through Carrizo Plain National Monument, established in 2001 to highlight the geology. The USGS has an online field guide to San Andreas features there. The National Monument is located about 160 miles north of Los Angeles, 260 miles south of San Francisco, about 55 miles west of Bakersfield, and and 50 miles north of Santa Barbara. The San Andreas is a 'right lateral fault'. That means that if you are standing on one side looking

across the fault's trace, objects on the other side have been offset to your right.

Famous sign just south of Parkfield, California.

 

The Pacific Plate is the rock on the right.
North America is the tan rock above the car.
Photo by David Lynch.

The field guide mentioned above will tell you how to find this fantastic exposure:








The patch on this road repairs damage from motion along the
fault, and has to be periodically replaced.

Try this website to visit some features in the Hollister- Pinnacles National Monument area; here and here.

This blog has photos of features along the San Andreas in the LA area.

This website is a field guide to the famous Wallace Creek site on the Carrizo Plain, probably the best-known feature on the San Andreas.




Wallace Creek--- This view of the Wallace Creek on the Carrizo Plain is perhaps the most famous feature on the San Andreas Fault. As the stream continues to progressively erode into its channel, right-lateral motion along the San Andreas Fault has moved the downstream portion of the channel northward (towards the viewer). Sediments cut by Wallace Creek were radiocarbon dated at about 3,700 years old, and the stream channel has been offset about 430 feet since then. USGS.