Roam-O-Rama
After a wet winter, the shallow ponds in Love Valley hold the shimmering, upside-down image of a classic California landscape: a weathered barn nestled at the far end of an Ireland-colored meadow, rounded foothills studded …
The all-day, 14-mile-loop hike up to the viewful summit of Condor Peak and back by way of verdant Trail Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains is well suited to properly conditioned hikers but punishingly difficult …
If you're a bicyclist with an antipathy for steep hills but a love for rural scenery, you'll appreciate El Monte Road. Few rural roads in San Diego County can offer as long a stretch of …
Oak Canyon Nature Center, a 60-acre natural park tucked amid the hilly housing tracts of eastern Anaheim, offers small kids (and their interested parents) plenty of room to roam on its tightly nested five miles' …
Standing apart from nearby peaks, Viejas Mountain can be seen from many parts of metropolitan San Diego as a dusky, obtusely triangular feature along the eastern horizon. A faint, partially overgrown trail Fed by countless …
Tens of millions of years in the making, Devil's Punchbowl is certainly Los Angeles County's most spectacular geological showplace. When looking down into this 300-foot-deep chasm, you sense the enormity of the slow yet inexorable …
What San Diego's backyard mountain ranges lack in terms of scale and grandeur is outweighed by the sublime and circumspect beauty to be found in some of its remote canyons. A case in point is …
About as fast as toenails grow, the Imperial Valley continues to widen in an east-west direction. As fast as fingernails grow, Imperial Valley's west side shudders northwestward relative to territory farther east and north. The …
Drive an hour east on Interstate 8 from San Diego toward El Centro and you won't fail to be impressed by the enormous stacks of rounded boulders thrusting skyward over the high-desert landscape. How did …
Leapfrog suburban growth has surrounded the once-remote Simi Hills of western Ventura County, but not before the National Park Service and local agencies succeeded in setting aside more than 5000 acres of contiguous public open …
South of the spreading suburbs of San Marcos, a scruffy ridgeline scrapes the southern sky. Topographic maps note the obscure names of its various high points: Cerro de las Posas, Double Peak, Franks Peak, and …
If outdoor exercise is part of your New Year's resolution, perhaps it's time to pull your ten-speed or mountain bike out of cold storage in the garage and head for the rambling byways of Rancho …
From below, 3273-foot Sitton Peak looks unimposing -- a bump atop the rambling Santa Ana Mountains, just north of the San Diego County line. On the summit, though, the feeling is decidedly "top of the …
Horsethief Canyon offers one of the quickest escapes into a designated wilderness area available to urban San Diegans. The canyon is a major entryway into the 13,000-acre Pine Creek Wilderness, south of Descanso and Pine …
Barely ten minutes' drive from the northern San Fernando Valley and the sprawling suburb of Santa Clarita, Placerita Canyon Natural Area nestles comfortably at the foot of one of the more verdant slopes of the …
Oriflamme Canyon's gurgling waters are borne to the open air high on the east slope of the Laguna Mountains. For five miles they trickle over polished granite and schist bedrock, tumble over small waterfalls, and …