I’ve been meandering around California in the United States for decades, which is how I came up with the 101 Best California Experiences, aka the California 101. But it’s a big state, there’s plenty of ground I haven’t covered, and 2023 feels like a year to get out there.
Of course, I’ll be alert for new places too. But there are so many long-standing options for exploring, eating and sleeping that demand attention.
You’ll find a lot of coastline here, several camping grounds and a trio of museums that debuted in 2022.
- Hike to the West Point Inn, Mount Tamalpais State Park
This is a historic, off-the-electrical-grid lodging that most guests can reach only by hiking or mountain-biking to the upper slopes of Mount Tamalpais. The West Point Inn was built in 1904 as part of a steam-train tourist attraction known as “the crookedest railroad in the world.”
The railroad closed in 1930, and the Marin Municipal Water District ended up owning the property. Hikers keep the place busy. There are five cabins, seven guest rooms (which share one bath) and a kitchen that’s open only to overnight guests.
It’s an hour’s hike from the Mountain Home Inn (a popular lunch spot), a two-hour hike from either Stinson Beach or Mill Valley.
- Explore Hetch Hetchy
Hetch Hetchy is the valley in Yosemite National Park that San Francisco wanted to dam (to provide water for the city) and John Muir wanted to save. Muir and the Sierra Club lost and the O’Shaughnessy Dam went up in 1923, taming the Tuolumne River and flooding an area said to rival nearby Yosemite Valley for beauty, drama, granite walls and waterfalls. The debate over whether to bring down the dam continues, now complicated by drought. > From page 1
But in the meantime, there’s still a lot to see along trails nearby. You can’t boat or swim in the reservoir (because 2.5 million Bay Area residents get drinking water from it), but there’s a 8km round-trip hike along the shoreline to Wapama Falls that sounds perfect for spring. The Hetch Hetchy parking lot is a 65km drive from the Yosemite Valley Visit Centre.
- Comb the beach at Garrapata State Park
With Carmel just 16km north and Big Sur’s most famous landmarks just south, this dramatic set of cliffs and beaches doesn’t get the awe it deserves. At the southern end of the park’s coastline is a 3km beach. I’d love half a day of exploration there at low tide, along with quality time prowling the clifftops with a camera.
Soberanes Point, a view spot above rocky shores, is handy. (But remember that Garrapata is Spanish for “tick,” and there are many of those critters in the area.)
- Wake up at Jalama Beach County Park
Sleep in a cabin or tent at Jalama Beach. I’ve made the trek here for burgers, but I’d like more than just a taste of this stop. It’s raw coast, with no cities for miles in either direction. The train tracks are one of the few reminders that civilisation is near.
- Dive into the pool at Montage Laguna Beach
Does it make me shallow to want to jump into this deep end? This is one of the most tempting swimming pools anywhere on the California coast, in part because of the surrounding Laguna shoreline, in part because of the pool’s hefty size, in part because of the cool sunburst design on the floor of the pool, which seems like it might be the solution to a secret medieval riddle. The only challenge here is money. There are no day passes to this Montage, and the last time I checked, the lowest room rate was US$1,160 (RM5,072) per night. (That gets you a king-size bed in a room with a partial ocean view.)
Does that make this the state’s priciest hotel? Oh, no. Many cost more. The priciest might be San Ysidro Ranch, a former citrus farm in Montecito with cottages spread across 04ha and rates that start at US$2,495 (RM10,909) nightly. (It’s where JFK and Jackie Kennedy honeymooned.)
- Hike (and maybe swim) Seven Falls Trail, Santa Barbara
I’m going to wait on this one until spring, preferably soon after some rain. This is a roughly three-mile round-trip journey that’s best undertaken with a swimsuit under your hike wear. It’s among the most popular routes in Santa Barbara. Until the rains of October, the creek bed was apparently bone-dry.
- Dine at the Inn of the Seventh Ray, Topanga Canyon
For 30 years, I’ve been hearing about what a romantic and quintessentially California sort of place this is. The restaurant website reports that the food is “charged with the vibration of the violet flame of the Seventh Ray for perhaps your personal transportation to a higher plane”.
To better grasp the context of those words, we are advised to check out the restaurant’s upstairs bookshop, the Spiral Staircase. It also helps to know that psychotherapists Ralph and Lucille Yaney opened the restaurant in 1975 (though its dominant culinary figures now are chef/co-owner Brad Miller and executive chef Gabriel Hatton).
- See the Cheech, Riverside
The Cheech Marin Centere for Chicano Art & Culture, part of the Riverside Art Museum, is next door to the Mission Inn. It opened in June with hundreds of works drawn from the collection gathered by actor-comedian Cheech Marin over the last 30-plus years. The centre, housed in a former library, is devoted to paintings, sculpture and photography that have sprung from Chicano culture.
- Raise a tent at Kirby Cove Campground, Marin County
This is an odd little spot with just five campsites at the foot of a steep mile-long approach in the Marin Headlands, part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Yet those five campsites are in ultra-high demand, because they’re near the water’s edge with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco beyond. Maximum stay: three nights. (Earplugs recommended because of foghorns.)
- Ogle OCMA
The Orange County Museum of Art, I mean. The museum’s long-awaited new building opened in October at the Segerstrom Centre for the Arts, just east of South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. Inside, curators have gathered a bold collection of challenging contemporary art – in dramatic counterpoint to the surrounding neighbourhood, which art critic Christopher Knight calls “a soulless cluster of car-friendly glass office buildings, stucco apartment blocks, hotels and another shopping centre”.11. Step into lava – cold, hard old lava
I’m not talking about that volcanic action in Hawaii. I mean Lava Beds National Monument,which straddles Siskiyou and Modoc counties at the north- eastern corner of California. It looks in pictures like an eerie underground wonderland, a landscape defined by the aftermath of eruptions hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Parts of Lava Beds have been closed because of fire damage from 2021. But the most interesting parts are open, including many caves (and many bats). It has been set aside for preservation since 1925, but like me, most Californians have probably never come close to it.
Source : The Star
