Page 48 - 2020 Travel Guide to California

ROAD TRIPS
AN F-LINE HISTORIC streetcar
passes the Ferry Building on the
Embarcadero, San Francisco,
right; Hearst Castle, below;
Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles,
opposite top; San Diego harbor
and skyline, opposite bottom.
ring everyone from Hopalong Cassidy to
John Wayne, filmed in the nearby Alabama
Hills.
A few tips: Springtime, when the Sierra
is still clad in snow, is the prettiest time for
the drive, although some side trips may be
limited. For an overnight stop, the town of
Bishop offers the largest selection of motels
and restaurants.
Day Trips
You don’t have to spend days or weeks on
the highway to see the best of California.
Within easy reach of major cities are exqui-
site road trips you can do in less than a day.
you’ll probably encounter members of the
Washoe and Paiute tribes.
Highway 395 grazes the shore of enor-
mous Mono Lake, which is so alkaline Mark
Twain once joked he could do his laundry
merely by dragging it behind him in a boat.
Stop at Manzanar, just off the highway, for
a poignant visit to the site of a relocation
camp for Americans of Japanese heritage
during World War II. In Lone Pine, the Lone
Pine Film History Museum pays tribute to
the hundreds of Hollywood Westerns, star-
San Francisco
Head north, across the Golden Gate Bridge,
to sample some of Northern California’s
most bucolic scenery. Fortunately, most of
it was spared by the devastating fires of the
last three years and conditions are back to
normal. Almost within sight of San Fran-
cisco’s skyscrapers you’ll come to Muir
Woods National Monument, a cathedral-
like preserve of old-growth redwoods at the
foot of Mount Tamalpais. Follow Highway 1
to Point Reyes National Seashore, where
you might catch tule elk grazing on misty
hillsides above the wave-battered coast.
46 2020 TRAVEL GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA
West Marin County, with its organic farms,
artisanal bakeries and gourmet cheese-
makers, is the breadbasket for San
Francisco’s foodie culture. Stop for lunch at
the Hog Island Oyster Farm, where you can
munch on bivalve mollusks pulled straight
from Tomales Bay. The long, narrow bay,
incidentally, is a submerged section of the
notorious San Andreas Fault. Farther north
on Highway 1 you’ll come to Bodega Bay, a
sleepy fishing village where Alfred Hitch-
cock unleashed avian terror in The Birds.
The Tides restaurant, where terrified
townspeople took shelter, is still there,
although hardly recognizable in its current
form. A few miles inland, in the separate
town of Bodega, you can find the familiar
schoolhouse and church from the movie.
Continue on to Sebastopol, renowned for
its juicy Gravenstein apples and an outpost
of Sonoma County’s wine country. Turn
south on Highway 101 and head back to San
Francisco, stopping for a celebratory cock-
tail in Sausalito, with the lights of the city
twinkling across the bay.
Los Angeles
On a day trip along the Angeles Crest Scenic
Byway you’re more likely to spot a bighorn
sheep than a Kardashian. As you wind up
TREKANDSHOOT/SHUTTERSTOCK; PIKAPPA51/SHUTTERSTOCK. OPPOSITE: CITYPASS; PUNG/SHUTTERSTOCK