All Stories from Southern CA

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  Stairway to Weirdness

  Here’s one to put in your Stranger Flings file: a hike that’s also a peek into the history of several Angeleno residents and their ties to the Third Reich. This weird chapter linge

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  Shipwrecked in Palos Verdes

  Usually you need serious scuba gear and a lot of courage to get up close and personal with a massive shipwreck. But on the rocky shores of Lunada Bay in Palos Verdes Estates, you c

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  Light at the End of the Road

  Looking for the light at the end of the road? How about a light station?! Dramatically perched at the tip of a headland and surrounded by 30 acres of open space, Point Cabrillo Lig

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  Sea-nic Stay & Stroll

  Charmed. That’s about the best word to describe the way you’ll feel when you stay at Mendocino’s Sea Rock Inn. Its location couldn’t be better: just outside the village and overloo

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  Good Times in Anza-Borrego's Badlands

  Anza-Borrego’s badlands look forbidding, but anyone with a sense of adventure can dive in and explore V-shaped canyons, 100-foot-deep slots, and a vast maze of sandstone rock forma

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  Journey into the Chasm of Doom

  When you enter Joshua Tree’s Chasm of Doom, your fate is sealed. Your life becomes an experience of mystery, steep climbs, steeper drops, chimneying, and death-defying squeezes. Wh

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  Chutes and Ladders

  Just when you think you can’t go any farther in Painted Canyon, you remember why this route is called the Ladder Canyon Trail. Whew! There it is: a perfectly placed ladder that get

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  The Undead Ghost Town

  Every Halloween, the worlds of the living and the dead blur together. In the “living ghost town” of Randsburg that condition is permanent. This strange gold-rush town near the El P

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  Picnic at Pumpkin Rock

  “‘This is Halloween, this is Halloween,’ pumpkins scream in the dead of night,” intones a chorus of disembodied voices in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, whose protago

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  Face It: You're Lost!

  You smell the kettle corn, you hear the farm animals, you feel the Halloween spirit … but let’s face it: You’re lost! Actually, you’re in Temecula’s Big Horse Corn Maze and Harvest

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  Behold the Superslabs

  Bored with the scenery between LA and Vegas along I-15? You must have missed Mormon Rocks. Wedged smack on the San Andreas Fault in Cajon Pass, these massive, tilted slabs of sands

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  Psychedelic Lava

  You’d be hard-pressed to find a volcanic landscape in California as memorable and psychedelic as Fossil Falls. This chasm of water-sculpted lava rock in the Coso Mountain Range nor

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  Planet of the Pinnacles

  The Trona Pinnacles have costarred as backdrop in sci-fi epics like Planet of the Apes and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, but seeing these tufa towers in person is far more jaw-d

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  San Pedro Outside the Box

  How much does San Pedro appreciate art? Well, in this historic waterfront community, even the utility boxes are works of public art! Discover 10 of these decorated traffic signal power prisms (by 10 different local artists) on a 5.5-mile walk that also includes maritime history and culture.

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  Thailand? Armenia? Yes!

  Talk about a melting pot! Try this delicious medley composed of Thai Town, Little Armenia, and Barnsdall Art Park—all three and more on a tasty 2.75-mile East Hollywood walking loop.

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  Where the Murals Are

  Is the Arts District the best spot to see art in LA? Duh! We’re talking the brand-new Institute of Contemporary Art, edgy murals, murals in progress, and surprises around every cor

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  Big Tree Bonanza

  Roosevelt elk, canyons draped in ferns and dripping with small waterfalls, oh … and the tallest trees on the entire planet! Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park has all the fixings for world-class hiking.

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  Just Dune It

  Miles of epic sand dunes seem like something you're more likely to find in the desert than on Northern California's lush redwood coast. Surprise! One of the most spectacular expanses of sand-scape you’ll ever see is in Humboldt County, just minutes by car from Old Town Eureka.

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  I Do!

  Even if you’re not getting married anytime soon, you’ve gotta visit Wedding Rock, the most dramatic spot in Patrick’s Point State Park. It’s called Wedding Rock because the park’s

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  Screaming Mandatory!

  Feeling the wind whoosh past you as you soar above Corona’s Skull Canyon, 200 feet in the air while zipping along a matrix of steel cables, is one of the most exhilarating of all s

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