Roam
Here’s a bicycle ride that’s practically a land-based equivalent of the harbor cruise covering north San Diego Bay. Over an out-and-back stretch of 16 miles, you’re seldom far from the water, and the ease of …
Pico Canyon cuts deeply into the rugged Santa Susana Mountains, a few miles south of the Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park. The canyon is considered to be the birthplace of the oil industry in …
Familiar to most people around Del Mar but unknown to many outsiders, the Torrey Pines State Reserve Extension conceals itself amid the coastal bluffs inland from Del Mar and just north of the main Torrey …
On the eastern extremity of the San Gabriel Mountains, seemingly far from L.A.’s smoggy blanket of air, lies the Big Pines Recreation Area, designated as an all-season recreational area within Angeles National Forest. During the …
The sinuously curving rural roads on the far (north) side of Fallbrook offer a significant challenge to bicycle riders. Thirty or 40 years ago, the brushy hills and wooded backcountry canyons between Fallbrook and Temecula …
Bounded by some 32 freeway lanes carrying a half million vehicles a day, and smack dab in San Diego County’s busiest commercial zone, the San Diego River greenway in Mission Valley offers a surprising bit …
The multiuse trails of Marshall Canyon Regional Park (for hikers, mountain bikers, and equestrians) thread through Marshall and Live Oak canyons in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The inner recesses of both canyons …
Serene Lake Wohlford lies near the headwaters of Escondido Creek, its mirroring surface reflecting the shaggy-with-chaparral, boulder-studded hillsides that confine it. As early as 1895, water impounded for the benefit of Escondido’s farms and households …
The easternmost Backbone Trail, part of a “hikers highway in the making” through the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, skims across spacious Topanga State Park above Santa Monica and executes a final swan dive …
Palomar Mountain has dodged a couple of bullets in recent years. Wildfires in 2003 and 2007 have threatened to seriously damage San Diego County’s foremost example of oak-coniferous woodland, but the forests of Palomar have …
Perched several hundred feet up on a rocky slope north of Escondido, Dixon Lake stores drinking water and serves as a recreational resource as well. The lake’s camping facilities, picnic grounds, playgrounds, boat rentals, hiking …
Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park consists of over 4200 acres of shallow canyons, sandstone rock formations, narrow strips of oak and riparian woodland, and hillsides draped with aromatic sage-scrub vegetation. Subdivisions press against the …
The Laguna Mountain range, just east (and squarely in the “rain shadow”) of the nearby Cuyamaca Mountains, snags just enough moisture from passing Pacific storms to support a forest of scattered live oaks, black oaks, …
Thanks to the crusading efforts of Descanso cabinetmaker Duncan McFetridge (affectionately known by some as the “Robin Hood of Cleveland Forest”), certain privately owned lands in Cleveland National Forest near Descanso, formerly slated for housing …
Significant hiking feats can be accomplished in the “wilds” of Orange County, especially in the upper elevations of the Santa Ana Mountains, which define the county’s east border. A case in point is the 10-mile, …
Crickets sing and bullfrogs groan. A hawk alights upon a sycamore limb, then launches with outstretched wings to catch a puff of sea breeze moving up the canyon. A cottontail rabbit bounds across the trail, …