Out & About
Sycamore Canyon Open-Space Preserve sprawls across more than 2000 acres of granite-ribbed mountains southeast of Poway. About ten miles of old ranch roads, fire roads, and newer trails presently lace through the area. For a …
Upcoast from Malibu, in the serene western half of the Santa Monica Mountains, Leo Carrillo State Beach encompasses a bit more than a mile of ocean frontage plus 2000 acres of interior hillsides and canyons. …
Tucked against a rocky, sunburnt hillside in the San Diego River valley outside Lakeside, El Monte Regional Park is a shock to the eye on a bright summer day. The park spreads across 98 flat …
San Gabriel Peak (elevation 6161 feet), is but one of the many named summits crowning the soaring, so-called "front range" of the San Gabriel Mountains north of Pasadena and the Los Angeles Basin. Years ago …
Books on the stairway walks of San Francisco and Los Angeles can be found on the shelves of bookstores in those areas. No such guidebook exists for San Diego, because -- despite the substantial vertical …
Chino Hills State Park, 13,000 acres of rolling former ranch lands near the juncture of Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties, is a mountain biker's paradise. Some 40 miles of dirt roadways suitable for cycling …
Last May, Mission Trails Regional Park opened a new trailhead parking lot and gateway that provides easy access to the park's western area from the community of Tierrasanta. To check out and make use of …
San Francisco acupuncturist refers to any procedure requiring many needles as “The Full Frida Kahlo.” He assumes his patients are familiar with Kahlo’s self-portrait, Diego on My Mind, in which wiry tendrils radiate from her …
Tucked amid the tall, straight trunks of lodgepole pines at nearly two miles high in the San Gorgonio Wilderness, the wind-sheltered and mostly bug-free Trail Fork Camp is a peakbagger's delight. Just above the trail …
The pleasantly tepid, breezy days of late June and early July (on the coast, at least) are perfect for the following eight-mile bicycle ride from downtown La Jolla to Bird Rock and back. The looping …
The marshland surrounding Orange County's Upper Newport Bay is but a small remnant of a wetland that once reached inland to the present city of Tustin. During the past 100,000 years or more the Santa …
Flanked by avocado orchards and brand-new suburban housing, the 43-acre Los Jilgueros Preserve (jilgueros means finches) stands as a quiet oasis of tranquillity in booming Fallbrook. Endowed with two good-sized ponds and patches of freshwater …
The Oak Flat Trail, the only developed hiking trail along the Interstate 5 corridor through Angeles National Forest, offers ever-widening vistas of the fault-tortured canyon country north of Los Angeles. Drop by here sometime for …
Pessimists! Like the poor, they’re always with us. When people started to promote the notion of an Oceanside Museum of Art about five years ago, James Pahl, director of that museum today, recalls, “About half …
If you like big trees, Middle Peak is the place to go in San Diego County. Middle Peak's cone-shaped form is capped with some of the largest coniferous trees in the Cuyamaca Mountains and in …
Born of snow-fed rivulets, the many tributaries of the East Fork San Gabriel River gather together to form one of the liveliest mountain streams in the San Gabriel Mountains. At a spot called "the Narrows" …