California

San Luis Obispo is a California Central Coast Treat
By Brian E. Clark In more than two decades of living in California during my peripatetic newspaper career, I traveled the state from north to south. (East to West, too.) I called San Francisco, Nevada City, Davis, Modesto, and San Diego home and wrote about places from Mount Shasta in

Van Go: West Coast Winging It (Part One)
Story & photos by Julie Snyder Wide awake in our Barstow, California hotel room at 3 a.m., Joe and I pondered our next move. Did we carry on east to the Grand Canyon despite the winter travel advisory and frigid temperatures? Or cancel our reservations and point Van Go

Paso Robles: A Road Less Traveled
By Brian E. Clark For decades, so the story goes, Paso Robles was a mere pitstop off California’s Highway 101 for wine aficionados on their way to the Napa and Sonoma valleys. But that began changing about two decades ago, and Paso Robles – which means Passage of the Oaks in Spanish

Fillmore Street & Coronavirus
Fillmore Street & Coronavirus, a film by Jules & Effin Older Jules Older is author and publisher of the ebooks, DEATH BY TARTAR SAUCE: A Travel Writer Encounters Gargantuan Gators, Irksome Offspring, Murderous Mayonnaise & True Love and SKIING THE EDGE: Humor, Humiliation, Holiness and Heart Effin Older is

Ski Heaven in South Lake Tahoe
By David McKay Wilson The snow kept falling during our spring break in South Lake Tahoe – on the shores and in the glorious mountains nearby North America’s largest alpine lake. It flurried at Sierra-at-Tahoe during our warm-up day, as we floated through powder in a magical lichen-covered forest. It

Guerneville: A River Runs Through It. And Sometimes Over It.
Words by Jules Older. Photos by Effin Older. Guerneville, California. It floods. And floods, and floods, and floods. Even now, it’s still replanting, rebuilding, re-opening from its most recent flood which, in February 2019, poured four feet of water over Main Street. While it’s indisputably true that floods cause heartache

Benicia (You Ought To Go. No, Really)
Photos by Effin Older. Words by Jules Older When you say Benicia, San Franciscans tend to scorn. “Why go there?” they sigh. Here’s why. Just an hour or so north of the Bay Bridge, Benicia is a surprise-filled with surprises. For 13 months in the 1850s, it

La Jolla Sparkles as SoCal’s Riviera
By Brian E. Clark The 360-degree view from Mount Soledad, which rises to a height of 822 feet above La Jolla and is home to a veterans’ memorial, is stunning in its expanse: One a clear day, you can see Orange County to the north. To the south, downtown San Diego and beyond

Experiencing Yosemite and Lake Tahoe with Grand American Adventures
Story and photos by Bart Beeson It’s difficult to truly appreciate the scale and sheerness of Yosemite’s El Capitan monolith until you’re standing right beneath it. The rock wall rises up from the valley with a jarring suddenness. On a recent trip to Yosemite, my first time to the park,