Roam
Southern Orange County is richly endowed with regional and open-space parks, which helps to atone for the immense area of valley and hillside now brutally overrun with suburban development. These open spaces allow residents and …
The Highland Valley Trail, in northernmost Rancho Bernardo, runs along a hillside just above Highland Valley Road, with good views of the currently dry upper arm of Lake Hodges and the broad, agriculture-dotted San Pasqual …
During the 55-year existence of O'Neill Regional Park in Orange County, the park's area has grown from 278 acres to more than 3000 acres. During this same span of time, a spreading tide of suburban …
Winding fjordlike through the boulder heaps of the arid In-Ko-Pah Mountains, Bow Willow Canyon promises -- and delivers -- solitude. During a weekday-morning's exploratory venture into Bow Willow's moist upper recesses, no one disturbed my …
Wildwood Park in Thousand Oaks is Ventura County's most scenic suburban park. The scenery here has been imprinted in the minds of many in the over-50 age group: the area was once an outdoor set …
Now that San Diego County's historic megafires are extinguished, outdoor-oriented folks — and the just plain curious — are anxious to get out there and do some sightseeing. The full recovery of the natural landscape …
For half a year now, rainbows have been conspicuously absent from San Diego skies. This will surely change within a few weeks as we encounter the first of several winter storms spinning out of the …
The so-called Main Divide, or summit ridge, of the Santa Ana Mountains straddles the boundary between Orange and Riverside Counties, definitively separating the L.A./Orange County urban sprawl from inland communities such as Corona, Lake Elsinore, …
Poway's Iron Mountain thrusts its conical, chaparral-clad summit nearly 2700 feet above sea level, a height that is frequently well above the low-lying coastal haze. On many a crystalline winter day, the summit offers a …
Millions of years of tectonic uplift, weathering, and erosion created the maze of monzogranite boulders in the Wonderland of Rocks section of Joshua Tree National Park. Wherever you look in this region, your mind is …
The 5.5-mile Kelly Ditch Trail, completed in 1985, is perhaps the most beautiful pathway yet built in the Cuyamaca-Julian area. This hiking/horse trail is routed partly along a century-old diversion ditch. You'll also tread over …
An engineering marvel when built in the 1890s, the Mt. Lowe Railway above Pasadena and Altadena lived a checkered past full of both glory and destruction. Before its final abandonment in the mid-1930s, the line …
The striped skunk stood defiantly in the middle of the trail, its tail held straight up and its beady eyes tracking my every move. I slunk by, circumscribing a 180-degree arc of 10-yard radius -- …
At 3111 feet of elevation, Sandstone Peak lies at the very top of the Santa Monica Mountains. The view from the summit is panoramic, with distant mountain ranges, the hazy Los Angeles Basin, and the …
September temperatures remain warm on Mount Laguna, and both of the large national-forest campgrounds -- Laguna and Burnt Rancheria -- atop the 6000-foot mountain are winding down their busy summer season. During much of the …
Solstice Canyon Park, a unit of the sprawling Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, invites your attention, with superb oak woodland habitat to enjoy, and lessons in fire ecology to ponder. Since its unveiling in …