California: A 2023 Roadtrip North and Back

 

The top of the Golden Gate Bridge disappears into the coastal
fog (known as "the marine layer" in California). We crossed it
northbound after driving through the western part of 
San Francisco on 19th Street.

California is a big and surprisingly diverse state: mountains, canyons, beaches, deserts, endless farm fields, dairy pastures, redwoods and Joshua trees. Since moving here from Maryland in 2017, Jane and I have tried to experience as much of California as we can. We've visited at least 30 of its 58 counties. 

Our 16-day July-August 2023 trip was from our home in San Diego to Lassen Volcanic National Park near the northeast corner of the state.  We stopped at some places we had visited before as well as explored areas entirely new to us. Lassen is covered in another post, so this is just about the stops along the way and back.

First was Los Angeles, a relatively short drive from San Diego although L.A. traffic can turn it into a crawl. We stayed at the Palihotel on Melrose Avenue. We explored L.A. on foot on a previous trip. This time we drove from our hotel to the Hammer Museum at UCLA, the Norton Simon Museum, the Huntington Botanical Gardens and to the iconic Griffith Observatory (which we saw only from our car as we couldn't find a parking spot). Both museums are rather small and can be toured in a couple of hours. The Hammer has a very good cafe, Lulu, and the Norton Simon has a snack bar on the edge of its sculpture garden, which has several Henry Moore works. The Huntington is in Pasadena, so we got to see a bit of that iconic community, too. We've seen a lot of fabulous gardens around the world, in Cape Town, Zagreb, Marrakesh, Christchurch and more, not to mention in Brooklyn and the Bronx. The Huntington ranks at the top and its Chinese Garden should be a must-see for any flora-loving tourist.

 We walked to dinner our two nights at the Palihotel, once to an unremarkable Chinese place where we were the only people not getting takeout, and once to Connie and Ted's, which is a bustling and decent seafood place on nearby Santa Monica Boulevard.

Next was another place we had visited before, Morro Bay on the coast in San Luis Obispo County.  We had enjoyed Morro Bay on a previous car trip just as California was reopening after the worst of the covid pandemic, and this time we stayed two nights at the same hotel, the Anderson Inn, and ate at the same places, the Galley restaurant at the Anderson Inn, and the Stax Wine Bar. The main attractions at Morro are Morro Rock, which dominates the waterfront, and the sea otters, which practically pose for photos near the shore.  A large and popular state beach is within walking distance, too.  At Morro Bay your car can stay parked since everything is either on the harbor or a block or two away. 

After a long drive up U.S. 101, through San Francico, over the Golden Gate Bridge and through Marin and Sonoma counties, Calistoga was our third stop. Twenty or so years ago, when we lived in New York, we were touring the tasting rooms in Sonoma County and crossed over to Napa to try the mud baths at Dr. Wilkinson's. The baths were fun, hot peaty mud, not muddy mud, and followed by massages  This time we stayed at Dr. Wilkinson's, which has changed owners (now part of Marriott) and has gone from somewhat run-down to a chic boutique hotel. We didn't bathe in mud this time (the prices have more than doubled) but we did enjoy all three thermal pools.

We ate at two notable places here, an outdoor lunch at Buster's, a BBQ and music venue that was comfortable even in the 90-dgrees-plus weather, and dinner two nights at Evangeline's, a New Orleans-themed restaurant with a Court of the Two Sisters-style patio. While my steak frites was wonderful the first night, the "gumbo" the second night was not. I don't think it could be legally sold as "gumbo" in New Orleans or anywhere else in the South (I'm from Mississippi). But I imagine that everything else on the menu would be OK. 

We stopped at a couple of in-town tasting rooms, both pet projects, I suspect, of wine enthusiasts. One was Lawer Estates, where tastings (we each did one) are $35 to $55.  The cabernet sauvignons, the syrah and the pinot noir were all quite good, and the tasting room server was able to recommend wineries for later in our trip.  Unfortunately, this early in our car trip, we weren't ready to buy wines to take home, which would mean lugging them in and out of hotel rooms for the rest of the trip to keep them from overheating in our parked car.  The other tasting room was adjacent to Evangeline's. At Olabisi (tastings $40 each) we thought the wines were not at the level of Lawer's and weren't tempted to buy at all. 

We left Calistoga after breakfast at Dr. Wilkinson's and were at the Highland Ranch Resort near Lassen Volcanic National Park in time for a late lunch. The ranch's restaurant is just about the only place to eat  there, and fortunately it's pretty good. We had three dinners and three breakfasts there.

Heading south toward home, our first stop was Plymouth, a small wine town in Amador County a few minutes east of Sacramento. Just south is Sutter Creek, a larger town and ground zero for the 1849 California Gold Rush. It's also a wine destination, but our focus was on Plymouth. The Lawer tasting room guy in Calistoga, who once worked in Plymouth, described the town as just a traffic circle, and that's fairly accurate. Rest, where we stayed two nights, seems to be the only hotel still in business, and its associated restaurant, Taste, is the best place for dinner. The menu in the dining rooms at Taste is a set, fixed price affair, but you can order a la carte if you sit at the bar. 

The county fair was under way while we were there, and apparently its wine-tasting venue had attracted almost all other wine tourists, so we had many tasting rooms almost to ourselves the Friday afternoon and Saturday that we were there. This is zinfandel country, but there are other red varietals as well. We came home with a mixed case: zins from Turley; tempranillo, zin and barbera from Jeff Runquist, two zins from Andis, and a zin and a port from Scott Harvey.  None are very fruit-forward and all have loads of secondary flavors.  

We headed west to the coast for our next stop, Carmel.  We stayed two nights at Tickle Pink in Carmel Highlands, which is not part of the more famous Carmel-by-the-Sea.  This is Monterey County and there are wineries and tasting rooms, but here we wanted to sight-see.  We had previously stayed south of Carmel at Big Sur, and north of Carmel in Monterey, and had driven Carmel's vastly over-rated Seventeen-Mile Drive (which is mostly on residential streets with hotel-size homes), seen the Pebble Beach golf courses and the iconic Point Lobos State Reserve. This time we revisited Point Lobos and toured around picturesque Carmel-by-the-Sea.  

Paso Robles, another place we had visited before, was our last stop. We stayed two nights in a room fashioned from shipping containers and dropped into the middle of a vineyard, the Geneseo at Cass Winery. Our first visit to Paso was in 2020 and is covered in another post. This time we were 10 or 15 minutes out of town but within easy reach of good tasting rooms. At Eberle we met Gary Eberle, now nearly 80, who was the first to bring the French syrah grape to California. We left with one of his syrahs and a red blend called Full Boar Red.  Tablas Creek is one of Paso's best-known wineries, and we left its tasting room with a mourvedre and the red blend called En Goblet. We didn't get to the tasting room at Cass, where we were staying, but we did enjoy a Cass marsanne (a white) at the inn's happy hour. 

The drive from Paso to home in San Diego took about six hours. 

Here are some photos from the trip: 

"The Castle of Perserverance," a 1978 work in particleboard by Roland Reiss, at the 
Hammer Museum. It was partially funded by the actor and comedian Will Ferrell.

Van Gogh's 1888 oil "Portrait of 
a Peasant (Patience Escalier)"
at the Norton Simon Museum.

Henry Moore's 1952-53 bronze "King
and Queen" at the Norton Simon.

"Patching Up the Sky" at the Huntington Botanical Gardens' Chinese garden, which is 
called the Garden of Flowering Frangrance.  The paths, water features and pavilions of this
area are just a small fraction of the sprawling park.

Morro Rock as seen from our room at the
Anderson Inn in Morro Bay. Most of our 
time there the rock was at least partially
hidden by fog.

This is one of the many dozing and active sea otters that we saw
 from shore as we walked out to Morro Rock.

As it was on our previous visit to Morro Bay, Stax Wine Bar
was a favorite on this trip, too. We had a lunch and a
dinner here. Best wait staff in town.

Dr. Wilkinson's is at the eastern end of Lincoln Avenue, Calistoga's main street.

Guests can choose from three pools at Dr. Wilkinson's, heated to different
temperatures. The warmest is in a covered spa area and prohibits children.

It wasn't open when we were there, but the 
Calistoga Depot promises shops, caviar, wine 
and more in repurposed old passenger cars
parked at what once was the end of the 
railroad line in Napa County.

Blues are served along with barbeque at Buster's
in Calistoga. A pretty cool place even in
90-degree weather.

Happy hour at the Rest in Plymouth.

We walked by but we didn't go into the
Amador County Fair.

Tickle Pink is a very 1950s hotel overlooking a cove and the Pacific Ocean in 
Carmel Highlands. The room could be a set from a Doris Day movie,
complete with a telephone beside the toilet.

The view from our balcony at Tickle Pink.

Residential streets in Carmel-by-the-Sea proudly do not have sidewalks. The
path on the right here is part of a shoreline trail and has cove and ocean views.

A sea otter at Point Lobos State Reserve.

Harbor seals at Point Lobos.

Driftwood along the rugged shore at Point Lobos.

Shipping containers were used to create eight rooms at Genesea at the Cass winery and
vineyards outside Paso Robles. Each room has a pop culture name: Bohemian Rapsody,
Easy Rider, etc. We stayed in White Rabbit, which was playing on a loop
in the room when we arrived. 

Our small deck at Genesea overlooked vineyards.

California: Fire and Snow at Lassen

 

Even in late July, the snow of the 2022-23 winter had not melted. 
This is Lake Helen, one of several glacier-formed lakes at Lassen.

In July 2023, Jane and I finally made it to Lassen Volcanic National Park.  It was on our itinerary for a summer 2022 road trip from Seattle to San Diego, but we both came down with covid enroute and had to skip Lassen on that trip. 

For 2023, we went from destination to destination on our way north from San Diego to Lassen, which is near the northeast corner of California. On the way home, we made other stops. We're trying to see as much of California as we can and we figure we've been in more than half of the state's 58 counties.

Our two-night stops on the way north were Los Angeles, Morro Bay and Calistoga. On the way home we did two-night stops at Plymouth (near Sacramento), Carmel and Paso Robles. The trip is detailed in another post.

For our three nights at Lassen, we stayed at Highland Ranch Resort, one of the few hotels near Lassen.  We had an afternoon and then two full days to explore the park. We knew in advance that the 2021 Dixie Fire had reached Lassen, but we were unprepared for endless vistas of charred trees. The fire started 40 miles from the park, burned from July 13 to October 26 and eventually destroyed 963,309 acres. It was the largest fire in California history. 

When we arrived at the park in July 2023, the heavy snows of the previous winter had not yet disappeared (one roadside sign said we were at 8,711 feet} and the trail to Bumpass Hell, the park's signature geothermal field, had not opened for the season.  This is in late July! We did see another geothermal feature, boiling and smelly mud at the Sulphur Works, which is right on the park's main road. Other trails were open and we made the easy 1.4-mile walk to Cold Boiling Lake, where subterranean gasses create bubbles in what is really a pond.  We also did the more strenuous King Creek Falls loop. A lot of its nearly 500 feet of elevation change is climbed all at one time on the return trail with steep and narrow stairs carved along a cliff above the creek's falls and cascades. The park called this 2.3-mile trail "moderate." A hike we didn't attempt was Lassen Peak, a 4.8-mile trek that ascends almost 2,000 feet. The park describes it as exposed, loose rock switchbacks and "strenuous." 

One of the most pleasant things about Lassen was the lack of crowds. This is a relatively unknown national park and not near any Interstate highways.  Although the burned areas were huge, a good bit of the park survived untouched with many towering lodgepole pines. It has examples of four kinds of volcanos: shield volcano (Prospect Peak), plug dome volcano (Lassen Peak), cinder cone volcano (Cinder Cone), and composite volcano (Brokeoff Mountain).  There are monitors around the park to detect ground movement that might mean another eruption is imminent. The last big one was in 1915 when Lassen Peak exploded, sending volcanic ash as far away as 200 miles. 

Here are some photos:

Lassen Volcanic National Park is
in northeastern California.

At 10,457 feet, Lassen Peak is visible from many points in the park. It is the
most southern active volcano in the Cascades Range.

Crescent Crater, seen here from the Devastated Area
Interpretive Trail, is 8,645 feet above sea level. The
trail explains what happened during Lassen Peak's
1915 eruption, which rained as much as 100 feet
of rocks onto a forest and sent ash as far away
as 200 miles.

Most trails at Lassen are less than four
miles roundtrip. The longest is the Brokeoff
Mountain trail, which is 7.4 miles with
a 2,500-foot elevation change.

This is part of the Kings Creek Falls trail. It traverses
a large burned area as well as areas that had not been 
burned. The steepest part of the trail is on the return
loop which has stairs cut into a cliff as it
relentlessly climbs beside roaring cascades.
Beautiful but strenuous. Not moderate, despite
the stairs (barely visible here).

Another section of the Kings Creek Falls trail.

Kings Creek cascades.

Cold Boiling Lake is really a bubbling pond.

The bubbles at Cold Boiling Lake.

The trail to Bumpass Hell geothermal field was still closed by snow in late July,
so the Sulphur Works was the only place we saw any geothermal activity. 
Enlarge this to read more easily.

The Sulphur Works  pool of bubbling and sulphurous
mud is right on the park's main road.

Steam escapes from holes just across the road from the bubbling mud.

Supposedly, a man named Bumpass gave Bumpass Hell
its name when he was badly burned after breaking through
the area's crust.

The main road at Lassen wends its way around mountains and along valleys,
but it does not get you out of the western half of the park. The eastern half,
which has no internal road connection to the western half, gets very few
visitors. The main attractions are Juniper Lake, Cinder Cone and the
Painted Dunes.  East of the park's eastern boundary is the Caribou
Wilderness section of Lassen National Forest. 

Summit Lake is one of several glacier-created lakes in the park.

Lake Helen, which has parking and a picnic 
area, is probably the most photographed 
lake at Lassen.

Algae accounts for Emerald Lake's distinctive color.

Besides being unsightly, the burned
areas of the park can be dangerous.

Burned trees from the 2021 Dixie Fire stand along the trail to Cold Boiling Lake.

The Kings Creek Falls trail crosses little
streams of snow melt among the burned trees.

These rocks rained down into what is now called the Devastated Area during the 1915
eruption of Lassen Peak. Rocks such as these, 100 feet deep, wiped out acres of 
pine trees, but eventually a new forest appeared atop the rocks. Then the
area was further devastated in 2021 by the Dixie Fire. These pine
cones could be the start of yet another new forest here.

....

A view of Lassen Peak from the Bumpass Hell trailhead. The large rock
in the foreground was possibly ejected from Lassen Peak during 
its 1915 eruption.