i live in san francisco and i would like to ride to santa cruz next weekend. i would like to know the route if anyone knows it and/or a website that explains various bike routes throughout california and the country.

Don't know the routes myself, but this map site might help for around the bay.
https://bicycling.511.org/maps.htm

You should pick up a map at your LBS called "Bicycle Transportation Map of the SF Peninsula - San Mateo County". It has a sub-section for long distance routes, which shows a few alternatives to route 1 along the way

Since no one else has, I'd say that going south you want to take 35/Skyline until about Highway 92, then Canada Road until Woodside, then up Woodside to Skyline again, and take that all the way south over 17. From there it gets a little tricky, you want to get onto San Jose Soquel Road, but there are a number of intermediate turns. You might also try downloading Klimb from https://www.klimb.org and seeing what route that gives you.

thank you alphamoose for answering my question. klimb is an excellent program. Is it impossible just to take Highway 1 the whole way?

I think you may be able to, but I'm really not sure. I don't know if the stretch from SF down to Pacifica is easily bikable or not. Others may. Certainly from the middle peninsula on south it's OK.