Page 93 - 2014 Travel Guide to California

CALIFORNIA’S GREAT AMERICA
sends thrill seekers for a loop on
Flight Deck, right, and Gold Striker,
Northern California’s tallest and
fastest wooden roller coaster, is
always a thrill, bottom right.
In downtown San Jose, trace the rise of
technology and explore new discoveries in
science at the Tech Museum of Innovation
with its interactive exhibits, an IMAX the-
ater and even a health and biotech gallery
where you can try your hand at becoming
a real-life genetic engineer. Meanwhile, in
Mountain View, the Computer History
Museum contains the world’s largest col-
lection of artifacts from the beginnings of
the computer age, including some of the
first computers from the 1940s and the
one-ton “minicomputer” from 1959 that
was revolutionary for its time.
Another museum, the NASA Ames
Research Center at Moffett Field in Santa
Clara, offers a fascinating look into the U.S.
space program. Among the displays are a
moon rock sample collected by the crew of
Apollo 15’s mission; a Mercury Redstone
capsule launched in 1960, the last
unmanned test flight before Mercury 7;
and a space shuttle cockpit simulator.
Theme Parks, Football & Shopping
The county has plenty of other unique
attractions. California’s Great America
theme park in Santa Clara is full of
thrilling rides including Gold Striker, the
fastest and tallest wooden roller coaster in
Northern California. Rising nearby is the
new 68,500-seat Levi’s Stadium, the future
site of Super Bowl L and, starting with the
2014 season, home to the NFL’s San Fran-
cisco 49ers.
Also close by is the bizarre Winchester
Mystery House, open for daily tours. Sarah
Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle
fortune, constructed the 160-room Victo-
rian mansion and gardens non-stop over a
38-year period to appease the spirits of
those killed by the rifle. The maze of quirky
rooms continues to fascinate visitors.
Plenty of shopping opportunities are
available all over the county, including at
Westfield Valley Fair—Northern Cali-
fornia’s largest enclosed mall—and the
upscale European-style shopping and
dining complex, Santana Row. In Palo Alto
you can stroll bustling University Avenue,
take a campus tour of beautiful Stanford
University and shop and dine at adjacent
Stanford Shopping Center.
The early explorers who settled here
wouldn’t be surprised that the bountiful
area they were drawn to has, centuries later,
evolved into one of the world’s most fertile
centers of entrepreneurship, ideas and cre-
ativity. They knew it was special.
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