Anacapa Island is the closest, smallest, and easiest first taste of Channel Islands National Park, and this Anacapa Island guide is built around its two best experiences: paddling sea caves at the base of volcanic Read more…
Some redwood groves make you earn the payoff with a long drive and a steep climb. Armstrong Redwoods does the opposite. Three miles north of Guerneville, an 805-acre grove of old-growth coast redwoods sits just Read more…
Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park protects some of the finest old-growth coast redwood forest left on Earth, and it pairs that forest with a fern-draped canyon, a wild beach, and meadows full of Roosevelt elk. Read more…
A Santa Cruz Island day trip is the wildest single day you can have off the Ventura coast. One hour on a ferry from Ventura Harbor, and you step onto an island with no cars, Read more…
The Sonoma Coast is California’s wild edge: 17 miles of Highway 1 where wide sandy beaches sit below grassy bluffs, sea stacks rise out of the surf, and summer fog usually burns off by midday, Read more…
At the far north end of Napa Valley, where Highway 29 runs out of vineyards at the foot of Mount St. Helena, sits Calistoga, a small town that runs on hot water. This Calistoga travel Read more…
High on the crest of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Castle Rock State Park feels like a different world from the valley floor below, where sandstone outcrops rise out of redwood and Douglas-fir forest and, on Read more…
Few places in California deliver a first impression like Emerald Bay. The road rounds a bend on Highway 89, and the whole bay opens below: deep blue-green water ringed by granite cliffs, a tiny island, Read more…
Lodi sits 35 miles south of Sacramento in the San Joaquin Valley, and it offers some of the most relaxed wine tasting in California. This Lodi wine country guide is built for a slow weekend: Read more…