Out & About
One of Ansel Adams’s most familiar and famous images, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, is the photographic equivalent of Aaron Copeland’s orchestral suite Appalachian Spring, John Ford’s movie Stagecoach, or Edward Hopper’s painting of a corner …
In the past couple of years, San Diego County has opened two new flora- and fauna-rich open-space preserves just south of Ramona. Both are key links in the county’s Multiple Species Conservation Program, which aims …
Few areas along Interstate 5 in California are as desolate and as traffic-dense as the stretch immediately north of the San Fernando Valley, where a zillion traffic lanes and ramps sort themselves out in the …
Who knew that it snows in Athens? On my way to the island of Paros to teach painting at an art school, I stayed in the Plaka, a historic district near the Acropolis of Athens, …
The “ponds tour,” suitable for hikers, runners, and mountain bikers, serves as a fine introduction to the City of Escondido’s Daley Ranch — a sprawling, 3000-acre open-space preserve in the hills north of town. The …
Born from snow-fed rivulets, the many tributaries of the East Fork San Gabriel River gather together to form one of the liveliest streams in the San Gabriel Mountains. At “the Narrows” of the East Fork, …
If water is an element essential to your hiking pleasure, then this hike in the Cuyamacas may be for you. Along Juaquapin Creek, you can sit in the shade and listen to the most peaceful …
The quiet, shady interior of El Prieto Canyon seems impossibly remote given its stone’s-throw proximity to the edge of an Altadena subdivision. Majestic live oaks flank the canyon’s stream, casting dense pools of shade. A …
The 454-acre Del Dios Highlands County Preserve, recently unveiled just outside the North County community of Del Dios, now provides a direct connection between Del Dios Highway and the popular Elfin Forest Recreational Reserve. Formerly, …
Decades-old O’Neill Regional Park near Rancho Santa Margarita has a newer “appendage” — a six-mile piece of the Arroyo Trabuco, a shallow, gradually descending canyon going south toward Mission Viejo. An old fire road along …
While most of the Anza-Borrego Desert swelters, the temperature hovers as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler at the “high desert” locale of Culp Valley, 3400 feet above sea level. Culp Valley is the only …
Adjoining the vast spaces of Angeles National Forest, Claremont Hills Wilderness Park spreads over foothills spilling down toward the college town of Claremont. The Cobal Canyon Loop, the one significant hike in the park that …
The ambitiously constructed Secret Canyon Trail, circuitously nosing its way down the canyon walls of Pine Valley Creek for 14 miles, traverses nearly the entire length of the Pine Creek Wilderness in Cleveland National Forest. …
Do you guys serve beer? Only to ourselves. — From the Bronx Pizza FAQ on the back of the to-go menu It’s a good, pithy answer, entirely in keeping with the feel of the place. …
With gentle grades most of the way, the San Juan Trail is tailor-made for a leisurely saunter from the Main Divide of the Santa Ana Mountains to the lower foothills. Due to an elevation change …
For the second year in a row, fire-following springtime wildflowers are popping up on the slopes of Poway’s Rattlesnake Canyon. A reconnaissance of the area in late March revealed a rainbow of color: California poppies, …