California news, stories & travel reviews
Smack dab in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Berkeley stands Julia Morgan’s “Little Castle.” Old hotels hold a certain allure for me, and the Berkeley City Club is no exception. The stone …
From Moro Rock to the memorable Bixby Creek Bridge, beauty abounds along the Pacific Coastal Highway in the form of uninterrupted expansive views extending to the beryl-blue horizon. The road from Pismo Beach to Half …
So, I took the little missus up to Los Angeles for the day. Left the sunshine and the safety of San Diego and ventured into that gloom and doom to the north. She’d never seen …
Trying to change the negative reputation that the Slabs had acquired over the years as a melting pot for drug addicts, hippies and psych ward releases, Builder Bill created the Range, just southeast of the …
For us San Diegans heading north, it’s those rolling, stress-releasing mountains inland of Temecula that we cruise through on the way to Palm Springs. But instead of darting right on Highway 74, hang a left. …
For the record: I’m not a fancy, gotta-have-posh type of woman; I’m OK with “rough around the edges.” I’m instinctively drawn to character, whether quaint and endearing or quirky and eclectic. I like spice, color …
Southern California airplane buffs and planespotters flock to Imperial Hill in El Segundo – a picturesque spot overlooking Los Angeles Int'l Airport. This windy overlook at the corner of E. Imperial Ave. and Sheldon St. …
Ten minutes late (on time if you’re on “hippie time,” I suppose), a woman wearing sparkly orange tennis shoes and a long velvet coat walks up to the street corner, shouting to us in a …
Undeniably one of the most picturesque roads you’ll ever traverse, California’s Route 1 north of Santa Barbara is a largely contiguous strip of undeveloped coastline with endless, arresting views. (“Undeveloped,” as in not much there …
Weathered from a 75-million-year-old sandstone cliff in La Jolla are seven sister caves. Like many other seaside caverns, these, too, have been used by pirates. Only the cargo they smuggled was human. California’s eight-year-gold rush …
I am in love with the deserts of Southern California. There is no greater joy than leaving the ’burbs on a sunny Saturday, stocked up with water and sunscreen, and driving off into the beyond. …
The Trona Pinnacles (not to be confused with Pinnacles National Monument near Steinbeck’s Soledad) is one of those natural geological wonders that awes. Set back five miles off SR 178, twenty miles east of Ridgecrest, …
For starters, the name is misleading. “Balboa Island” is not an island – well, not a real one, anyway. Back in the early 1900s its harbor, Newport Harbor, needed channels dredged of sand and silt …
On a lonely stretch of Highway 395 in Central Cali, the Sierras rise from the earth and reach for the heavens. It is here, and more specifically Mt. Whitney, where the modern-day hiker goes for …
I know people who say they’re from the ’60s as some people say they’re from Paris or New York. It’s not descriptive, it’s declarative, proudly (or smugly) so, and vaguely definitive of their politics. I …