Great Escapes Excerpt: Savoring Crystal Cove

Every day at sunset, the flag is ceremoniously hoisted at Crystal Cove.

The martini flag, that is.

The tradition dates back to the early 1930s, when the first families cruising Coast Highway in their Ford roadsters stumbled upon this former rum smugglers’ haven along the Orange County oceanfront. They staked their summertime claims with tents in the sand and surfed on simple planks of balsa wood. After the late-afternoon martini ritual, everyone gathered for nights for nights of tiki parties and luaus and bonfires on the shore.

The squatters returned to Crystal Cove year after year, from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and gradually put up thatched cottages on the bluffs—shacks with fabulous views. They cobbled together their summer homes from hunks of driftwood and leftovers scavenged from old Hollywood movie sets, thoughtfully left behind by silent-era filmmakers. “I often say that I was the luckiest girl in the world,” says Laura Davick, whose parents met here during the 1940s tent-camping era and later snapped up one of the original cottages for $2,000 in 1960. “I grew up here.”

Remarkably, Crystal Cove and its ramshackle colony have survived as a timeless paradise even as developers transformed the rest of Orange County’s villages, farms, and namesake citrus groves into mile after mile of suburban tracts, condos, and shopping centers. The drafty little cottages on the bluffs passed from generation to generation, until the Irvine Company finally sold Crystal Cove to the state of California for $32 million. The sale forced out the renters but ended up opening the cottages to everyone.

Nestled between Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, Crystal Cove is now a 2,791-acre state park that boasts a spectacular sweep of beachfront and, since summer 2006, freshly refurbished rustic cottages where you can stay overnight and soak up a perfect old California experience.

Yes, paradise has been restored and is being carefully tended by the nonprofit Crystal Cove Alliance, which Davick now runs. The cove’s cottages, though, are so popular that reservations disappear as soon they become available on the first day of every month. Even if you can’t score a cottage, Crystal Cove State Beach makes an exceptional day trip, an idyllic spot for an afternoon at the beach. And you’ll find those martinis (along with breakfast, lunch and dinner) here.

A great reason to go downtown: Art Walk Thursday

On the second Thursday of every month, downtown LA’s museums, art galleries, and nonprofit arts venues all throw open their doors and invite the public to visit for free. The Downtown Art Walk is tonight – and it’s fun.

The area around Fourth and Main streets, once an abandoned zone next to Skid Row, is now part of a lively Gallery Row, a bundle of showrooms, shops, and sidewalk cafés. Metropolis books is part of the scene, too. Revelers of all ages and backgrounds turn out for the Art Walk.

Need another reason to go? The Hippodrome bus (pictured above) makes its debut run tonight, offering a free shuttle (from 6-10 pm) that stops at various venues. Esotouric founders Kim Cooper and Richard Schave will be onboard, hosting a “floating salon” and sharing interesting tidbits for savoring downtown and its history. Be sure to ask Kim and Richard to point you to the Edison.

P.S. Here’s a map.

Buy Me Some Sushi and Baby Back Ribs

Now this is a great idea for a travel story: New York Times writer Peter Meehan eats his way through twelve major league baseball parks and critiques the chow. West Coast stops include Dodger Stadium (he praises the pastrami heroes, but disses the Dodger Dogs) and San Francisco’s AT&T Park (the “leading example of upscale food”).

Meehan’s taste of the Bay: “By the seventh-inning stretch, I had sampled a peppery clam chowder served in a bread bowl dotted through with tender bits of clam; a fried catfish sandwich in a crisp, Cajun-accented crust; and a homey bowl of jerk chicken over rice, with a healthy dash of jalapeño hot sauce. “

You’ll want to devour the entire story here. And then add your two cents here.

Looking for discounted baseball tickets this summer? Check out the Goldstar website.

Summer travel tips: Car-free Santa Barbara

Cruising to Santa Barbara for the weekend always sounds wondrous (the beaches! the biking! the hurricane margaritas at the Palace Grill! Those zoo giraffes that eat right from your hand!). But then there’s the inevitable freeway to face on Friday afternoon (or any afternoon, really). Someone hiccups in a car just up ahead on the101 freeway and suddenly you’re stopped dead somewhere below Thousand Oaks and can’t seem to get rolling again. So you crawl through the bumper-to-bumper mess in Camarillo and then noodle your way around the stop-and-start gridlock near Oxnard.

By the time you finally spy the landmark Big Yellow House on the hill at Summerland, your easy two-hour getaway has morphed into nearly four hours—and counting—of traffic hell.

Memo to self: Next time, take the train.

Santa Barbara is an ideal destination for a car-free escape, especially with gas prices at record highs this summer. “One of the great pleasures in life,” says Ralph Festig, president of the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition, “is being on the train and watching the traffic on the 101 as you go past.”

My book Great Escapes: Southern California includes a chapter exploring an easy car-free getaway to the Central Coast. You can board the train at Union Station in Los Angeles (there are numerous suburban stops, too) and step off two 2 hours and 36 minutes later at the Santa Barbara station on State Street, the city’s main drag. Hotels, restaurants, shopping, the beach, and amazing farmers’ markets are just steps away.

Santa Barbara’s Car-Free Project even offers discounts to visitors who leave their cars at home — deals on Amtrak fares, hotels, and attractions such as wine-country tours in the comfort of a biodiesel-powered Mercedes van. You can request a handy (and free) info pack from Santa Barbara’s Car-Free Project here. Also be sure to visit Green Santa Barbara, too.

Catalina’s newest attraction

Here’s a frame grab from a video of a sweet newborn filly, the first horse born on Catalina Island in seventeen years.

Excerpt: Take this drive and love it

Author and world traveler Pico Iyer has it just right: You’ve got to head to the hills when you’re roaming Central California. These are the same magical hills where the Queen of England’s horse whisperer built his ranch and the dethroned King of Pop created his Neverland. Where the world’s best bicyclist brought his team each winter to train for the Tour de France. Where Davy Crockett traded in his coonskin cap for a vineyard and country inn. Where two middle-aged guys named Miles and Jack careened Sideways onscreen chasing women, swilling pinot noir, and transforming a string of bucolic towns into tourist hubs.

Cowboys and celebrities, retirees and wine growers, oenophiles and ostriches; they all coexist peacefully in this corner of Santa Barbara County, a world of sprawling ranches and rolling hillsides quilted with vineyards and surrounded by the Santa Ynez and San Rafael mountains.

In Great Escapes: Southern California, I explore the Santa Ynez Valley in a chapter called “Take This Drive and Love It.”

“The beauty of driving through the mountains behind Santa Barbara is that it’s a perfect place and way for getting lost,” says Iyer, who grew up in Santa Barbara and shares a first-person passage in the chapter. “And whatever you stumble into will have the feeling of a rare discovery that not so many people know about.”

You can easily drive from one country town to the next along a pair of country roads (CA 154 and 246) that ramble across the valley and crisscross near Santa Ynez. The 2004 movie Sideways put Central California’s wine country on the map of popular interest after so many years in the shadow of Napa and Sonoma.

Less well known is that the Santa Ynez Valley also is an equestrian paradise, even though Seabiscuit, an Academy Award nominee in 2005, was filmed here, too. From Kentucky Derby winners to dainty miniature show horses, more than 30 equine breeds thrive on the valley’s ranches and family farms. As Gigi Meyer noted in The New York Times, “It’s hard to say which valley town is the horsiest.”

Or which of the valley’s many wineries is the tastiest.

Those are questions you’ll want to ponder for yourself as you wind your way north from Santa Barbara along Highway 154 on one of the prettiest drives Southern California has to offer.

Summer getaways and a good works trek, too

This Thursday, June 5, I’ll be at the Marina Pacitica Barnes and Noble in Long Beach talking about Great Escapes: Southern California. Check out the details here.

This weekend, I went to the amazing BookExpo America in LA. Check out my photo gallery here. [Travel finds included Explorer's handy mini map series (photo above) and the Greenopia guides for Los Angeles and San Francisco.]

Yesterday, I helped pal Lori Sakamoto create a blog for her good works trek to Africa this summer. Check out the Crocs for Kenya Project.