Page 30 - 2024/2025 Travel Guide to CALIFORNIA
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 ROAD TRIPS
PYGMY GROVE in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, below; The Glendale Hills near Los Angeles, right; fun on the beach
at Hotel del Coronado, San Diego, opposite top; Highway 1 in Santa Cruz County, opposite bottom.
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 Museum of Western Film History pays tribute to the hundreds of Hollywood West-
erns, starring everyone from Hopalong Cassidy to John Wayne, filmed in the nearby Alabama Hills.
A couple of 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.
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 recent years. Almost within sight of San Francisco’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. 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 Co., 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 for being an outpost of Sonoma County’s wine country. Turn south on Highway 101 and head back to San Francisco, stopping for a celebratory cocktail 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 and over narrow ridgetops in the San Gabriel
28 2024-25 TRAVEL GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA
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